A  PERSONAL 
RECORD 


By  JOSEPH  CONRAD 


HARPER  &  BROTHERS  PUBLISHERS 
NEW  YORK  K^W  LONDON 


Copyright,  1912 y  by 
Harper  &  Brothers 


PRINTED  IN  THE  UNITED  STATES  OF  AMERICA 


A  PERSONAL  RECORD 


-4^f6'f/^ 


A  FAMILIAR  PREFACE 

As  a  general  rule  we  do  not  want  much 
encouragement  to  talk  about  ourselves;  yet 
this  little  book  is  the  result  of  a  friendly  sug- 
gestion, and  even  of  a  little  friendly  pressure. 
I  defended  myseK  with  some  spirit;  but,  with 
characteristic  tenacity,  the  friendly  voice  in- 
sisted, "You  know,  you  really  must." 

It  was  not  an  argument,  but  I  submitted 
at  once.     If  one  must !     .     .     . 

You  perceive  the  force  of  a  word.  He 
who  wants  to  persuade  should  put  his  trust 
not  in  the  right  argument,  but  in  the  right 
word.  The  power  of  sound  has  always  been 
greater  than  the  power  of  sense.  I  don't 
say  his  by  way  of  disparagement.  It  is 
better  for  mankind  to  be  impressionable  than 
reflective.  Nothing  humanely  great — great, 
I  mean,  as  affecting  a  whole  mass  of  lives — 
has  come  from  reflection.  On  the  other  hand, 
you  cannot  fail  to  see  the  power  of  mere 
words;  such  words  as  Glory,  for  instance, 
or  Pity.     I  won't  mention  any  more.     They 


A    FAMILIAR    PREFACE 

are  not  far  to  seek.  Shouted  with  persever- 
g;^C^,  with  ardour,  with  conviction,  these  two 
bj^  theii"  sound  alone  have  set  whole  na- 
tions in  motion  and  upheaved  the  dry,  hard 
ground  on  which  rests  our  whole  social  fabric. 
There's  "virtue"  for  you  if  you  like! 
Of  course  the  accent  must  be  attended  to.  The 
right  accent.  That's  very  important.  The  ca- 
pacious lung,  the  thundering  or  the  tender  vocal 
chords.  Don't  talk  to  me  of  your  Archimedes' 
lever.  He  was  an  absent-minded  person  with  a 
mathematical  imagination.  Mathematics  com- 
mands all  my  respect,  but  I  have  no  use  for  en- 
gines. Give  me  the  right  word  and  the  right  ac- 
cent and  I  will  move  the  world. 

What  a  dream  for  a  writer!  Because 
written  words  have  their  accent,  too.  Yes! 
Let  me  only  find  the  right  word!  Surely  it 
must  be  lying  somewhere  among  the  wreckage 
of  all  the  plaints  and  all  the  exultations 
poured  out  aloud  since  the  first  day  when 
hope,  the  undying,  came  down  on  earth.  It 
may  be  there,  close  by,  disregarded,  invisible, 
quite  at  hand.  But  it's  no  good.  I  believe 
there  are  men  who  can  lay  hold  of  a  needle 
in  a  pottle  of  hay  at  the  first  try.  For  my- 
self, I  have  never  had  such  luck. 

4 


A    FAMILIAR    PREFACE 

And  then  there  is  that  accent.  Another 
difficulty.  For  who  is  going  to  tell  whether 
the  accent  is  right  or  wrong  till  the  word  is 
shouted,  and  fails  to  be  heard,  perhaps,  and 
goes  down-wind,  leaving  the  world  unmoved? 
Once  upon  a  time  there  lived  an  emperor 
who  was  a  sage  and  something  of  a  literary- 
man .  He  jotted  down  on  ivory  tablets 
thoughts,  maxims,  reflections  which  chance 
has  preserved  for  the  edification  of  posterity. 
Among  other  sayings — I  am  quoting  from 
memory — I  remember  this  solemn  admoni- 
tion: "Let  all  thy  words  have  the  accent  of 
heroic  truth."  The  accent  of  heroic  truth! 
This  is  very  fine,  but  I  am  thinking  that  it 
is  an  easy  matter  for  an  austere  emperor  to 
jot  down  grandiose  advice.  Most  of  the 
working  truths  on  this  earth  are  humble,  not 
heroic;  and  there  have  been  times  in  the  his- 
tory of  mankind  when  the  accents  of  heroic 
truth  have  moved  it  to  nothing  but  derision. 

Nobody  will  expect  to  find  between  the 
covers  of  this  little  book  words  of  extraor- 
dinary potency  or  accents  of  irresistible 
heroism.  However  humiliating  for  my  self- 
esteem,  I  must  confess  that  the  counsels  of 
Marcus  Aurelius  are  not  for  me.    They  are 

5 


A    FAMILIAR    PREFACE 

more  fit  for  a  moralist  than  for  an  artist. 
Truth  of  a  modest  sort  I  can  promise  you, 
and  also  sincerity.  That  complete,  praise- 
worthy sincerity  which,  while  it  delivers  one 
into  the  hands  of  one's  enemies,  is  as  likely 
as  not  to  embroil  one  with  one's  friends. 

"Embroil"  is  perhaps  too  strong  an  ex- 
pression. I  can't  imagine  among  either  my 
enemies  or  my  friends  a  being  so  hard  up 
for  something  to  do  as  to  quarrel  with  me. 
"To  disappoint  one's  friends"  would  be 
nearer  the  mark.  Most,  almost  all,  friend- 
ships of  the  writing  period  of  my  life  have 
come  to  me  through  my  books;  and  I  know 
that  a  novelist  lives  in  his  work.  He  stands 
there,  the  only  reality  in  an  invented  world, 
among  imaginary  things,  happenings,  and 
people.  Writing  about  them,  he  is  only 
writing  about  himself.  But  the  disclosure  is 
not  complete.  He  remains,  to  a  certain 
extent,  a  figure  behind  the  veil;  a  suspected 
rather  than  a  seen  presence — a  movement 
and  a  voice  behind  the  draperies  of  fiction. 
In  these  personal  notes  there  is  no  such  veil. 
And  I  cannot  help  thinking  of  a  passage  in 
the  "Imitation  of  Christ"  where  the  ascetic 
author,  who  knew  life  so   profoundly,  says 

6 


A    FAMILIAR    PREFACE 

that  **  there  are  persons  esteemed  on  their 
reputation  who  by  showing  themselves  destroy 
the  opinion  one  had  of  them."  This  is  the 
danger  incm-red  by  an  author  of  fiction  who  sets 
out  to  talk  about  himself  without  disguise. 

While  these  reminiscent  pages  were  ap- 
pearing serially  I  was  remonstrated  with  for 
bad  economy;  as  if  such  writing  were  a  form 
of  self-indulgence  wasting  the  substance  of 
future  volumes.  It  seems  that  I  am  not 
sufficiently  literary.  Indeed,  a  man  who 
never  wrote  a  line  for  print  till  he  was  thirty- 
six  cannot  bring  himself  to  look  upon  his  ex- 
istence and  his  experience,  upon  the  sum  of 
his  thoughts,  sensations,  and  emotions,  upon 
his  memories  and  his  regrets,  and  the  whole 
possession  of  his  past,  as  only  so  much  ma- 
terial for  his  hands.  Once  before,  some  three 
years  ago,  when  I  published  "The  Mirror  of 
the  Sea,"  a  volume  of  impressions  and  memo- 
ries, the  same  remarks  were  made  to  me. 
Practical  remarks.  But,  truth  to  say,  I  have 
never  understood  the  kind  of  thrift  they 
recommend.  I  wanted  to  pay  my  tribute 
to  the  sea,  its  ships  and  its  men,  to  whom 
I  remain  indebted  for  so  much  which  has 
gone  to  make  me  what  I  am.     That  seemed 

7 


A    FAMILIAR    PREFACE 

to  me  the  only  shape  in  which  I  could  offer 
it  to  their  shades.  There  could  not  be  a 
question  in  my  mind  of  anything  else.  It  is 
quite  possible  that  I  am  a  bad  economist; 
but  it  is  certain  that  I  am  incorrigible. 

Having  matured  in  the  surroundings  and 
imder  the  special  conditions  of  sea  life,  I  have 
a  special  piety  toward  that  form  of  my  past; 
for  its  impressions  were  vivid,  its  appeal 
direct,  its  demands  such  as  could  be  responded 
to  with  the  natural  elation  of  youth  and 
strength  equal  to  the  call.  There  was  nothing 
in  them  to  perplex  a  young  conscience.  Hav- 
ing broken  away  from  my  origins  under  a 
storm  of  blame  from  every  quarter  which 
had  the  merest  shadow  of  right  to  voice  an 
opinion,  removed  by  great  distances  from  such 
natural  affections  as  were  still  left  to  me,  and 
even  estranged,  in  a  measure,  from  them  by  the 
totally  unintelligible  character  of  the  life 
which  had  seduced  me  so  mysteriously  from 
my  allegiance,  I  may  safely  say  that  through 
the  blind  force  of  circumstances  the  sea  was  to 
be  all  my  world  and  the  merchant  service  my  j 
only  home  for  a  long  succession  of  years. 
No  wonder,  then,  that  in  my  two  exclusively 
sea  books — "The  Nigger  of  the  Narcissus," 

8 


A    FAMILIAR    PREFACE 

and  "The  Mirror  of  the  Sea"  (  and  in  the  few 
short  sea  stories  hke  "Youth"  and  "Typhoon" 
\l  have  tried  with  an  almost  fihal  regard  to 
render  the  vibration  of  life  in  the  great 
world  of  waters,  in  the  hearts  of  the  sim- 
ple men  who  have  for  ages  traversed  its  soli- 
tudes, and  also  that  something  sentient  which 
seems  to  dwell  in  ships — the  creatures  of  their 
hands  and  the  objects  of  their  care. 
VOne's  literary  life  must  turn  frequently  for 
sus^nance  to  memories  and  seek  discourse 
with  the  shades,  unless  one  has  made  up  one's 
mind  to  write  only  in  order  to  reprove  man- 
kind for  what  it  is,  or  praise  it  for  what  it 
is  not,  or — generally — to  teach  it  how  to 
behave.  Being  neither  quarrelsome,  nor  a 
flatterer,  nor  a  sage,  I  have  done  none  of 
these  things,  and  I  am  prepared  to  put  up 
serenely  with  the  insignificance  which  at- 
taches to  persons  who  are  not  meddlesome  in 
some  way  or  other.  But  resignation  is  not 
indifference.  I  would  not  like  to  be  left 
standing  as  a  mere  spectator  on  the  bank 
of  the  great  stream  carrying  onward  so  many 
lives.  I  would  fain  claim  for  myself  the  fac- 
ulty of  so  much  insight  as  can  be  expressed 
in  a  voice  of  sympathy  and  compassion. 

0 


A    FAMILIAR    PREFACE 

It  seems  to  me  that  in  one,  at  least,  au- 
thoritative quarter  of  criticism  I  am  suspected 
of  a  certain  unemotional,  grim  acceptance  of 
facts — of  what  the  French  would  call  secheresse 
du  coeur.  Fifteen  years  of  unbroken  silence 
before  praise  or  blame  testify  sufficiently  to 
my  respect  for  criticism,  that  fine  flower  of 
personal  expression  in  the  garden  of  letters. 
But  this  is  more  of  a  personal  matter,  reach- 
ing the  man  behind  the  work,  and  therefore 
it  may  be  alluded  to  in  a  volume  which  is  a 
personal  note  in  the  margin  of  the  public  page. 
Not  that  I  feel  hurt  in  the  least.  The  charge 
— ^if  it  amounted  to  a  charge  at  all — was  made 
in  the  most  considerate  terms;  in  a  tone  of 
regret. 

My  answer  is  that  if  it  be  true  that  every 
novel  contains  an  element  of  autobiography 
N^  — and  this  can  hardly  be  denied,  since  the 
^creator  can  only  express  himself  in  hjs  creation 
— then  there  are  som^FusTb  whom  an  open 
display  of  sentiment  is  repugnant.  I  would 
not  unduly  praise  the  virtue  of  restraint.  It 
is  often  merely  temperamental.  But  it  is 
not  always  a  sign  of  coldness.  It  may  be 
pride.  There  can  be  nothing  more  humiliat- 
Tng  than  to  see  the  shaft  of  one's  emotion  miss 

10 


A    FAMILIAR    PREFACE 

the  mark  of  either  laughter  or  tears.  Noth- 
ing more  humihating!  And  this  for  the  rea- 
son that  should  the  mark  be  missed,  should 
the  open  display  of  emotion  fail  to  move, 
then  it  must  perish  unavoidably  in  disgust  or 
contempt.  No  artist  can  be  reproached  for 
shrinking  from  a  risk  which  only  fools  run 
to  meet  and  only  genius  dare  confront  with 
impunity.  In  a  task  which  mainly  consists 
in  laying  one's  soul  more  or  less  bare  to  the 
world,  a  regard  for  decency,  even  at  the  cost 
of  success,  is  but  the  regard  for  one's  own 
dignity  which  is  inseparably  united  with  the 
dignity  of  one's  work. 

And  then — it  is  very  difficult  to  be  wholly 
joyous  or  wholly  sad  on  this  earth.  The 
comic,  when  it  is  human,  soon  takes  upon 
itself  a  face  of  pain;  and  some  of  our  griefs 
(some  only,  not  all,  for  it  is  the  capacity  for 
suffering  which  makes  man  august  in  the 
eyes  of  men)  have  their  source  in  weaknesses 
which  must  be  recognized  with  smiling  com- 
passion as  the  common  inheritance  of  us  all. 
Joy  and  sorrow  in  this  world  pass  into  each 
other,  mingling  their  forms  and  their  murmurs 
in  the  twilight  of  life  as  mysterious  as  an  over- 
shadowed ocean,  while  the  dazzling  brightness 

11 


A    FAMILIAR    PREFACE 

of  supreme  hopes  lies  far  off,  fascinating  and 
still,  on  the  distant  edge  of  the  horizon. 

Yes!  I,  too,  would  like  to  hold  the  magic 
wand  giving  that  command  over  laughter  and 
tears  which  is  declared  to  be  the  highest 
achievement  of  imaginative  literature.  Only, 
to  be  a  great  magician  one  must  surrender 
oneself  to  occult  and  irresponsible  powers, 
either  outside  or  within  one's  breast.  We 
have  all  heard  of  simple  men  selling  their  souls 
for  love  or  power  to  some  grotesque  devil. 
The  most  ordinary  intelligence  can  perceive 
without  much  rejSection  that  anything  of  the 
sort  is  bound  to  be  a  fool's  bargain.  I  don't 
lay  claim  to  particular  wisdom  because  of 
my  dislike  and  distrust  of  such  transactions. 
It  may  be  my  sea  training  acting  upon  a 
natural  disposition  to  keep  good  hold  on  the 
one  thing  really  mine,  but  the  fact  is  that  I 
have  a  positive  horror  of  losing  even  for  one 
moving  moment  that  full  possession  of  my- 
self which  is  the  first  condition  of  good  ser- 
vice. And  I  have  carried  my  notion  of  good 
service  from  my  earlier  into  my  later  existence. 
I,  who  have  never  sought  in  the  written  word 
anything  else  but  a  form  of  the  Beautiful — 
I  have  carried  over  that  article  of  creed  from 

12 


A    FAMILIAR    PREFACE 

the  decks  of  ships  to  the  more  circumscribed 
space  of  my  desk,  and  by  that  act,  I  suppose, 
I  have  become  permanently  imperfect  in  the 
eyes  of  the  ineffable  company  of  pure  esthetes. 
As  in  political  so  in  literary  action  a  man 
wins  friends  for  himself  mostly  by  the  passion 
of  his  prejudices  and  by  the  consistent  narrow- 
ness of  his  outlook.  But  I  have  never  been 
able  to  love  what  was  not  lovable  or  hate  what 
was  not  hateful  out  of  deference  for  some  gen- 
eral principle.  Whether  there  be  any  courage 
in  making  this  admission  I  know  not.  After 
the  middle  turn  of  life's  way  we  consider 
dangers  and  joys  with  a  tranquil  mind.  So 
I  proceed  in  peace  to  declare  that  I  have 
always  suspected  in  the  eflfort  to  bring  into 
play  the  extremities  of  emotions  the  debasing 
touch  of  insincerity..,'  In  order  to  move  others 
deeply  we  must  deliberately  allow  ourselves 
to  be  carried  away  beyond  the  bounds  of  our 
normal  sensibility^innocently  enough,  per- 
haps, and  of  necessity,  like  an  actor  who 
raises  his  voice  on  the  stage  above  the  pitch 
of  natural  conversation — but  still  we  have  to 
do  that.  And  surely  this  is  no  great  sin. 
But  the  danger  lies  in  the  writer  becoming 
the  victim  of  his  own  exaggeration,  losing  the 

13 


A    FAMILIAR    PREFACE 

exact  notion  of  sincerity,  and  in  the  end 
coming  to  despise  truth  itself  as  something  too 
cold,  too  blunt  for  his  purpose — as,  in  fact, 
not  good  enough  for  his  insistent  emotion. 
From  laughter  and  tears  the  descent  is  easy 
to  snivelling  and  giggles. 

These  may  seem  selfish  considerations;  but 
you  can't,  in  sound  morals,  condemn  a  man 
for  taking  care  of  his  own  integrity.  It  is 
his  clear  duty.  And  least  of  all  can  you 
condemn  an  artist  pursuing,  however  humbly 
and  imperfectly,  a  creative  aim.  In  that 
interior  world  where  his  thought  and  his 
emotions  go  seeking  for  the  experience  of 
imagined  adventures,  there  are  no  policemen, 
no  law,  no  pressure  of  circumstance  or  dread 
of  opinion  to  keep  him  within  bounds.  Who 
then  is  going  to  say  Nay  to  his  temptations 
if  not  his  conscience? 

And  besides — this,  remember,  is  the  place 
and  the  moment  of  perfectly  open  talk — I 
think  that  all  ambitions  are  lawful  except, 
those  which  climb  upward  on  the  miseries  or 
credulities  of  mankind.  All  intellectual  and 
artistic  ambitions  are  permissible,  up  to  and 
even  beyond  the  limit  of  prudent  sanity. 
They  can  hurt  no  one.     If  they  are  mad,  then 

14 


A    FAMILIAR    PREFACE        \ 

so  much  the  worse  for  the  artist.  Indeed,  as 
virtue  is  said  to  be,  such  ambitions  are  their 
own  reward.  Is  it  such  a  very  mad  presump- 
tion to  beheve  in  the  sovereign  power  of  one's 
art,  to  try  for  other  means,  for  other  ways 
of  affirming  this  behef  in  the  deeper  appeal 
of  one's  work?  To  try  to  go  deeper  is  not  to 
be  insensible.  A  [historian  of  hearts  is  not 
a  historian  of  emotions,  yet  he  penetrates 
further,  restrained  as  he  may  be,  since  his 
aim  is  to  reach  the  very  fount  of  laughter  and 
tears.  The  sight  of  human  affairs  deserves 
admiration  and  pity.  They  are  worthy  of 
respect,  too.  And  he  is  not  insensible  who 
pays  them  the  undemonstrative  tribute  of  a 
sigh  which  is  not  a  sob,  and  of  a  smile  which 
is  not  a  grin.  Resignation,  not  mystic,  not 
detached,  but  resignation  open-eyed,  con- 
scious, and  informed  by  love,  is  the  only  one 
of  our  feelings  for  which  it  is  impossible  to 
become  a  sham. 

Not  that  I  think  resignation  the  last  word 
of  wisdom.  I  am  too  much  the  creature  of 
my  time  for  that.  But  I  think  that  the 
proper  wisdom  is  to  will  what  the  gods  will 
without,  perhaps,  being  certain  what  their 
will  is — or  even  if  they  have  a  will  of  their 

15 


A    FAMILIAR    PREFACE 

own.  And  in  this  matter  of  life  and  art  it  is 
not  the  Why  that  matters  so  much  to  our 
happiness  as  the  How.  As  the  Frenchman 
said,  "//  2/  a  tou jours  lamaniere,''  Very  true. 
Yes.  There  is  the  manner.  The  manner  in 
laughter,  in  tears,  in  irony,  in  indignations 
and  enthusiasms,  in  judgments — and  even  in 
love.  The  manner  in  which,  as  in  the  fea- 
tures and  character  of  a  human  face,  the 
inner  truth  is  foreshadowed  for  those  who 
know  how  to  look  at  their  kind. 

Those  who  read  me  know  my  conviction 
that  the  world,  the  temporal  world,  rests  on 
a  few  very  simple  ideas;  so  simple  that  they 
must  be  as  old  as  the  hills.  It  rests  notably, 
among  others,  on  the  idea  of  Fidelity.  At 
a  time  when  nothing  which  is  not  revolu- 
tionary in  some  way  or  other  can  expect  to 
attract  much  attention  I  have  not  been 
revolutionary  in  my  writings.  The  revolu- 
tionary spirit  is  mighty  convenient  in  this, 
that  it  frees  one  from  all  scruples  as  regards 
ideas.  Its  hard,  absolute  optimism  is  re- 
pulsive to  my  mind  by  the  menace  of  fanati- 
cism and  intolerance  it  contains.  No  doubt 
one  should  smile  at  these  things;  but,  im- 
perfect Esthete,  I  am  no  better  Philosopher. 

16 


A    FAMILIAR    PREFACE 

All  claim  to  special  righteousness  awakens  in 
me  that  scorn  and  anger  from  which  a 
philosophical  mind  should  be  free.     .     .     . 

I  fear  that  trying  to  be  conversational  I 
have  only  managed  to  be  unduly  discursive. 
I  Jiave  never  been  very  well  acquainted  with 
the  art  of  conversation — that  art  which,  I 
understand,  is  supposed  to  be  lost  now.  My 
young  days,  the  days  when  one's  habits  and 
character  are  formed,  have  been  rather  fa- 
miliar with  long  silences.  Such  voices  as 
broke  into  them  were  anything  but  con- 
versational. No.  I  haven't  got  the  habit. 
Yet  this  discursiveness  is  not  so  irrelevant  to 
the  handful  of  pages  which  follow.  They, 
too,  have  been  charged  with  discursiveness, 
with  disregard  of  chronological  order  (which 
is  in  itself  a  crime),  with  unconventionality 
of  form  (which  is  an  impropriety).  I  was  told 
severely  that  the  public  would  view  with 
displeasure  the  informal  character  of  my 
recollections.  "Alas!"  I  protested,  mildly. 
"Could  I  begin  with  the  sacramental  words, 
'I  was  born  on  such  a  date  in  such  a  place'? 
The  remoteness  of  the  locality  would  have 
robbed  the  statement  of  all  interest.  I  haven't 
lived   through   wonderful   adventures   to   be 

17 


A    FAMILIAR    PREFACE 

related  seriatim,  I  haven't  known  distin- 
guished men  on  whom  I  could  pass  fatuous 
remarks.  I  haven't  been  mixed  up  with  great 
or  scandalous  affairs.  This  is  but  a  bit  of 
psychological  document,  and  even  so,  I  haven't 
written  it  with  a  view  to  put  forward  any 
conclusion  of  my  own." 

But  my  objector  was  not  placated.  These 
were  good  reasons  for  not  writing  at  all — 
not  a  defense  of  what  stood  written  already, 
he  said. 

I  admit  that  almost  anything,  anything 
in  the  world,  would  serve  as  a  good  reason 
for  not  writing  at  all.  But  since  I  have 
written  them,  all  I  want  to  say  in  their 
defense  is  that  4iiesfi_.  memories  put  down 
without  any  regard  for  'established  conven- 
tions have  not  been  thrown  off  without  system 
and  purpose.  ^They  have  their  hope  and 
their  aim.  The  nope  that  from  the  reading 
of  these  pages  there  may  emerge  at  last  the 
vision  of  a  personality;;  the  man  behind  the 
books  so  fundamentally  dissimilar  as,  for 
instance,  "Almayer's  Folly"  and  "The  Secret 
Agent,"  and  yet  a  coherent,  justifiable  per- 
sonality both  in  its  origin  and  in  its  action. 
This  is  the  hope.    The  immediate  aim,  closely 

18 


A    PERSONAL    RECORD 

associated  with  the  hope,  is  to  give  the 
record  of  personal  memories  by  presenting 
faithfully  the  feelings  and  sensations  con- 
nected with  the  writing  of  my  first  book  and 
with  my  first  contact  with  the  sea. 

In  the  purposely  mingled  resonance  of  this 
double  strain  a  friend  here  and  there  will 
perhaps  detect  a  subtle  accord. 

J.  C.  K. 


19 


A    FAMILIAR    PREFACE 


A  PERSONAL  RECORD 


BOOKS  may  be  written  in  all  sorts  of 
places.  Verbal  inspiration  may  enter 
the  berth  of  a  mariner  on  board  a  ship 
frozen  fast  in  a  river  in  the  middle  of  a  town; 
and  since  saints  are  supposed  to  look  benig- 
nantly  on  humble  believers,  I  indulge  in  the 
pleasant  fancy  that  the  shade  of  old  Flaubert 
— who  imagined  himself  to  be  (among  other 
things)  a  descendant  of  Vikings — ^might  have 
hovered  with  amused  interest  over  the  docks 
of  a  2,000-ton  steamer  called  the  Adowa,  on 
board  of  which,  gripped  by  the  inclement  winter 
alongside  a  quay  in  Rouen,  the  tenth  chapter 
of  "Almayer's  Folly"  was  begun.  With  in- 
terest, I  say,  for  was  not  the  kind  Norman  giant 
with  enormous  mustaches  and  a  thundering 
voice  the  last  of  the  Romantics?  Was  he  not, 
in  his  unworldly,  almost  ascetic,  devotion  to 
his  art,  a  sort  of  literary,  saint-like  hermit? 

£0 


A    PERSONAL    RECORD 

"*7^  has  set  at  last,'  said  Nina  to  her  mother, 
^pointing  to  the  hills  behind  which  the  sun  had 
sunk.''  .  .  .  These  words  of  Almayer's 
romantic  daughter  I  remember  tracing  on  the 
gray  paper  of  a  pad  which  rested  on  the 
blanket  of  my  bed-place.  They  referred  to 
a  sunset  in  Malayan  Isles  and  shaped  them- 
selves in  my  mind,  in  a  hallucinated  vision 
of  forests  and  rivers  and  seas,  far  removed 
from  a  commercial  and  yet  romantic  town  of 
the  northern  hemisphere.  But  at  that  mo- 
ment the  mood  of  visions  and  words  was  cut 
short  by  the  third  officer,  a  cheerful  and 
casual  youth,  coming  in  with  a  bang  of  the 
door  and  the  exclamation:  "You've  made  it 
jolly  warm  in  here." 

It  was  warm.  I  had  turned  on  the  steam- 
heater  after  placing  a  tin  under  the  leaky 
water-cock — ^for  perhaps  you  do  not  know 
that  water  will  leak  where  steam  will  not. 
I  am  not  aware  of  what  my  young  friend  had 
been  doing  on  deck  all  that  morning,  but 
the  hands  he  rubbed  together  vigorously  were 
very  red  and  imparted  to  me  a  chilly  feeling 
by  their  mere  aspect.  He  has  remained  the 
only  banjoist  of  my  acquaintance,  and  being 
also  a  younger  son  of  a  retired  colonel,  the 

21 


A    PERSONAL    RECORD 

poem  of  Mr.  Kipling,  by  a  strange  aberration 
of  associated  ideas,  always  seems  to  me  to 
have  been  written  with  an  exclusive  view 
to  his  person.  When  he  did  not  play  the 
banjo  he  loved  to  sit  and  look  at  it.  He  pro- 
ceeded to  this  sentimental  inspection,  and 
after  meditating  a  while  over  the  strings  under 
my  silent  scrutiny  inquired,  airily : 

"What  are  you  always  scribbling  there, 
if  it's  fair  to  ask ?'' 

It  was  a  fair  enough  question,  but  I  did 
not  answer  him,  and  simply  turned  the  pad 
over  with  a  movement  of  instinctive  secrecy: 
I  could  not  have  told  him  he  had  put  to 
flight  the  psychology  of  Nina  Almayer,  her 
opening  speech  of  the  tenth  chapter,  and  the 
words  of  Mrs.  Almayer's  wisdom  which  were 
to  follow  in  the  ominous  oncoming  of  a  tropical 
night.  I  could  not  have  told  him  that  Nina 
had  said,  "It  has  set  at  last."  He  would  have 
been  extremely  surprised  and  perhaps  have 
dropped  his  precious  banjo.  Neither  could  I 
have  told  him  that  the  sun  of  my  sea-going 
was  setting,  too,  even  as  I  wrote  the  words 
expressing  the  impatience  of  passionate  youth 
bent  on  its  desire.  I  did  not  know  this  myself, 
and  it  is  safe  to  say  he  would  not  have  cared. 


A    PERSONAL    RECORD 

though  he  was  an  excellent  young  fellow  and 
treated  me  with  more  deference  than,  in  our 
relative  positions,  I  was  strictly  entitled  to. 

He  lowered  a  tender  gaze  on  his  banjo,  and 
I  went  on  looking  through  the  port-hole. 
The  round  opening  framed  in  its  brass  rim 
a  fragment  of  the  quays,  with  a  row  of  casks 
ranged  on  the  frozen  ground  and  the  tail- 
end  of  a  great  cart.  A  red-nosed  carter  in 
a  blouse  and  a  woollen  night-cap  leaned 
against  the  wheel.  An  idle,  strolling  custom- 
house guard,  belted  over  his  blue  capote,  had 
the  air  of  being  depressed  by  exposure  to  the 
weather  and  the  monotony  of  official  exist- 
ence. The  background  of  grimy  houses  found 
a  place  in  the  picture  framed  by  my  port- 
hole, across  a  wide  stretch  of  paved  quay 
brown  with  frozen  mud.  The  colouring  was 
sombre,  and  the  most  conspicuous  feature 
was  a  little  cafe  with  curtained  windows  and 
a  shabby  front  of  white  woodwork,  correspond- 
ing with  the  squalor  of  these  poorer  quarters 
bordering  the  river.  We  had  been  shifted 
down  there  from  another  berth  in  the  neigh- 
bourhood of  the  Opera  House,  where  that  same 
port-hole  gave  me  a  view  of  quite  another 
sort  of  cafe — the  best  in  the  town,  I  believe, 

23 


A    PERSONAL    RECORD 

and  the  very  one  where  the  worthy  Bovary 
and  his  wife,  the  romantic  daughter  of  old 
Pere  Renault,  had  some  refreshment  after  the 
memorable  performance  of  an  opera  which 
was  the  tragic  story  of  Lucia  di  Lammermoor 
in  a  setting  of  light  music. 

I  could  recall  no  more  the  hallucination  of 
the  Eastern  Archipelago  which  I  certainly 
hoped  to  see  again.  The  story  of  *'Almayer's 
Folly"  got  put  away  under  the  pillow  for  that 
day.  I  do  not  know  that  I  had  any  occupa- 
tion to  keep  me  away  from  it;  the  truth  of 
the  matter  is  that  on  board  that  ship  we  were 
leading  just  then  a  contemplative  life.  I  will 
not  say  anything  of  my  privileged  position. 
I  was  there  "just  to  oblige,"  as  an  actor  of 
standing  may  take  a  small  part  in  the  benefit 
performance  of  a  friend. 

As  far  as  my  feelings  were  concerned  I  did 
not  wish  to  be  in  that  steamer  at  that  time 
and  in  those  circumstances.  And  perhaps  I 
was  not  even  wanted  there  in  the  usual  sense 
in  which  a  ship  "wants"  an  officer.  It  was 
the  first  and  last  instance  in  my  sea  life  when 
I  served  ship-owners  who  have  remained 
completely  shadowy  to  my  apprehension.  I 
do  not  mean  this  for  the  well-known  firm 


A    PERSONAL    RECORD 

of  London  ship-brokers  which  had  chartered 
the  ship  to  the,  I  will  not  say  short-lived,  but 
ephemeral  Franco-Canadian  Transport  Com- 
pany. A  death  leaves  something  behind,  but 
there  was  never  anything  tangible  left  from 
the  F.  C.  T.  C.  It  flourished  no  longer  than 
roses  live,  and  unlike  the  roses  it  blossomed 
in  the  dead  of  winter,  emitted  a  sort  of  faint 
perfume  of  adventure,  and  died  before  spring 
set  in.  But  indubitably  it  was  a  company, 
it  had  even  a  house-flag,  all  white  with  the 
letters  F.  C.  T.  C.  artfully  tangled  up  in  a 
complicated  monogram.  We  flew  it  at  our 
mainmast  head,  and  now  I  have  come  to  the 
conclusion  that  it  was  the  only  flag  of  its 
kind  in  existence.  All  the  same  we  on  board, 
for  many  days,  had  the  impression  of  being  a 
imit  of  a  large  fleet  with  fortnightly  departures 
for  Montreal  and  Quebec  as  advertised  in 
pamphlets  and  prospectuses  which  came 
aboard  in  a  large  package  in  Victoria  Dock, 
London,  just  before  we  started  for  Rouen, 
France.  And  in  the  shadowy  life  of  the 
F.  C.  T.  C.  lies  the  secret  of  that,  my  last 
employment  in  my  calling,  which  in  a  remote 
sense  interrupted  the  rhythmical  development 
of  Nina  Almayer's  story. 

25 


A    PERSONAL    RECORD 

The  then  secretary  of  the  London  Ship- 
masters' Society,  with  its  modest  rooms  in 
Fenchurch  Street,  was  a  man  of  indefatigable 
activity  and  the  greatest  devotion  to  his 
task.  He  is  responsible  for  what  was  my  last 
association  with  a  ship.  I  call  it  that  be- 
cause it  can  hardly  be  called  a  sea-going 
experience.  Dear  Captain  Froud — ^it  is  im- 
possible not  to  pay  him  the  tribute  of  aflfec- 
tionate  familiarity  at  this  distance  of  years — 
had  very  sound  views  as  to  the  advance- 
ment of  knowledge  and  status  for  the  whole 
body  of  the  officers  of  the  mercantile  marine. 
He  organized  for  us  courses  of  professional 
lectures,  St.  John  ambulance  classes,  corre- 
sponded industriously  with  public  bodies  and 
members  of  Parliament  on  subjects  touching 
the  interests  of  the  service;  and  as  to  the 
oncoming  of  some  inquiry  or  commission  re- 
lating to  matters  of  the  sea  and  to  the  work 
of  seamen,  it  was  a  perfect  godsend  to  his 
need  of  exerting  himseK  on  our  corporate 
behalf.  Together  with  this  high  sense  of  his 
official  duties  he  had  in  him  a  vein  of  personal 
kindness,  a  strong  disposition  to  do  what 
good  he  could  to  the  individual  members  of 
that  craft  of  which  in  his  time  he  had  been  a 

26 


A    PERSONAL    RECORD 

very  excellent  master.  And  what  greater 
kindness  can  one  do  to  a  seaman  than  to  put 
him  in  the  way  of  employment?  Captain 
Froud  did  not  see  why  the  Shipmasters' 
Society,  besides  its  general  guardianship  of 
our  interests,  should  not  be  unofficially  an 
employment  agency  of  the  very  highest  class. 

"I  am  trying  to  persuade  all  our  great 
ship-owning  firms  to  come  to  us  for  their  men. 
There  is  nothing  of  a  trade-union  spirit  about 
our  society,  and  I  really  don't  see  why  they 
should  not,"  he  said  once  to  me.  "I  am 
always  telling  the  captains,  too,  that,  all 
things  being  equal,  they  ought  to  give  prefer- 
ence to  the  members  of  the  society.  In  my 
position  I  can  generally  find  for  them  what 
they  want  among  our  members  or  our  asso- 
ciate members." 

In  my  wanderings  about  London  from  west 
to  east  and  back  again  (I  was  very  idle  then) 
the  two  little  rooms  in  Fenchm-ch  Street  were 
a  sort  of  resting-place  where  my  spirit,  hanker- 
ing after  the  sea,  could  feel  itself  nearer  to  the 
ships,  the  men,  and  the  life  of  its  choice — 
nearer  there  than  on  any  other  spot  of  the 
solid  earth.  This  resting-place  used  to  be, 
at  about  five  o'clock  in  the  afternoon,  full  of 

27 


A    PERSONAL    RECORD 

men  and  tobacco  smoke,  but  Captain  Froud 
had  the  smaller  room  to  himself  and  there  he 
granted  private  interviews,  whose  principal 
motive  was  to  render  service.  Thus,  one 
murky  November  afternoon  he  beckoned  me 
in  with  a  crooked  finger  and  that  peculiar 
glance  above  his  spectacles  which  is  perhaps 
my  strongest  physical  recollection  of  the  man. 

"I  have  had  in  here  a  shipmaster,  this 
morning,"  he  said,  getting  back  to  his  desk 
and  motioning  me  to  a  chair,  "who  is  in  want 
of  an  oflScer.  It's  for  a  steamship.  You 
know,  nothing  pleases  me  more  than  to  be 
asked,  but,  unfortimately,  I  do  not  quite  see 
my  way      .     .     ." 

As  the  outer  room  was  full  of  men  I  cast 
a  wondering  glance  at  the  closed  door;  but 
he  shook  his  head. 

"Oh,  yes,  I  should  be  only  too  glad  to  get 
that  berth  for  one  of  them.  But  the  fact  of 
the  matter  is,  the  captain  of  that  ship  wants 
an  ofiicer  who  can  speak  French  fluently,  and 
that's  not  so  easy  to  find.  I  do  not  know 
anybody  myself  but  you.  It's  a  second 
officer's  berth  and,  of  course,  you  would  not 
care  .  .  .  would  you  now.^^  I  know  that 
it  isn't  what  you  are  looking  for." 

28 


A    PERSONAL    RECORD 

It  was  not.  I  had  given  myself  up  to  the 
idleness  of  a  haunted  man  who  looks  for 
nothing  but  words  wherein  to  capture  his 
visions.  But  I  admit  that  outwardly  I  re- 
sembled sufficiently  a  man  who  could  make 
a  second  officer  for  a  steamer  chartered  by 
a  French  company.  I  showed  no  sign  of 
being  haunted  by  the  fate  of  Nina  and  by 
the  murmurs  of  tropical  forests;  and  even  my 
intimate  intercourse  with  Almayer  (a  person 
of  weak  character)  had  not  put  a  visible 
mark  upon  my  features.  For  many  years 
he  and  the  world  of  his  story  had  been  the 
companions  of  my  imagination  without,  I 
hope,  impairing  my  ability  to  deal  with  the 
realities  of  sea  life.  I  had  had  the  man  and 
his  surroundings  with  me  ever  since  my  re- 
turn from  the  eastern  waters — some  four  years 
before  the  day  of  which  I  speak. 

It  was  in  the  front  sitting-room  of  furnished 
apartments  in  a  Pimlico  square  that  they 
first  began  to  live  again  with  a  vividness  and 
poignancy  quite  foreign  to  our  former  real 
intercourse.  I  had  been  treating  myself  to  a 
long  stay  on  shore,  and  in  the  necessity  of 
occupying  my  mornings  Almayer  (that  old 
acquaintance)    came    nobly    to    the    rescue. 

£9 


A    PERSONAL    RECORD 

Before  long,  as  was  only  proper,  his  wife  and 
daughter  joined  him  round  my  table,  and  then 
the  rest  of  that  Pantai  band  came  full  of 
^  words   and    gestures.     Unknown    to   my   re- 
spectable landlady,  it  was  my  practice  directly 
after  my  breakfast  to  hold  animated  recep- 
tions of  Malays,  Arabs,  and  half-castes.  They 
^id    not    clamour    aloud    for    my    attention. 
/They  came  with  a  silent  and  irresistible  ap- 
I  peal — and  the  appeal,  I  affirm  here,  was  not 
to  my  self-love  or  my  vanity.     It  seems  now 
to    have    had    a    jnoral    character,    for    why 
should  the  memory  of  these  beings,  seen  in 
their  obscure,   sun-bathed  existence,  demand 
to  express  itself  in  the  shape  of  a  novel,  except 
on  the  ground  of  that  mysterious  fellowship 
I  which  unites  in  a  community  of  hopes  and 
'  fears  all  the  dwellers  on  this  earth? 

I  did  not  receive  my  visitors  with  boisterous 
rapture  as  the  bearers  of  any  gifts  of  profit 
or  fame.  There  was  no  vision  of  a  printed 
book  before  me  as  I  sat  writing  at  that  table, 
situated  in  a  decayed  part  of  Belgravia. 
After  all  these  years,  each  leaving  its  evidence 
of  slowly  blackened  pages,  I  can  honestly 
say  that  it  is  a  sentiment  akin  to  pity  which 
prompted   me  to  render  in  words  assembled 

30 


A    PERSONAL    RECORD 

with  conscientious  care  the  memory  of  things 
far  distant  and  of  men  who  had  lived. 

But,  coming  back  to  Captain  Froud  and 
his  fixed  idea  of  never  disappointing  ship- 
owners or  ship-captains,  it  was  not  hkely 
that  I  should  fail  him  in  his  ambition — to 
satisfy  at  a  few  hours'  notice  the  unusual 
demand  for  a  French-speaking  oflScer.  He 
explained  to  me  that  the  ship  was  chartered 
by  a  French  company  intending  to  establish 
a  regular  monthly  line  of  sailings  from  Rouen, 
for  the  transport  of  French  emigrants  to 
Canada.  But,  frankly,  this  sort  of  thing  did 
not  interest  me  very  much.  I  said  gravely 
that  if  it  were  really  a  matter  of  keeping  up 
the  reputation  of  the  Shipmasters'  Society 
I  would  consider  it.  But  the  consideration 
was  just  for  form's  sake.  The  next  day  I 
interviewed  the  captain,  and  I  believe  we 
were  impressed  favourably  with  each  other. 
He  explained  that  his  chief  mate  was  an 
excellent  man  in  every  respect  and  that  he 
could  not  think  of  dismissing  him  so  as  to 
give  me  the  higher  position;  but  that  if  I 
consented  to  come  as  second  ofiicer  I  would 
be  given  certain  special  advantages — and  so 
on. 

31 


A    PERSONAL    RECORD 

I  told  him  that  if  I  came  at  all  the  rank 
really  did  not  matter. 

"I  am  sm-e,"  he  insisted,  "you  will  get 
on  first  rate  with  Mr.  Paramor." 

I  promised  faithfully  to  stay  for  two  trips 
at  least,  and  it  was  in  those  circumstances 
that  what  was  to  be  my  last  connection  with 
a  ship  began.  And  after  all  there  was  not 
even  one  single  trip.  It  may  be  that  it  was 
simply  the  fulfilment  of  a  fate,  of  that  written 
word  on  my  forehead  which  apparently  for- 
bade me,  through  all  my  sea  wanderings,  ever 
to  achieve  the  crossing  of  the  Western  Ocean 
— using  the  words  in  that  special  sense  in 
which  sailors  speak  of  Western  Ocean  trade, 
of  Western  Ocean  packets,  of  Western  Ocean 
hard  cases.  The  new  life  attended  closely 
upon  the  old,  and  the  nine  chapters  of 
"Almayer's  Folly"  went  with  me  to  the  Vic- 
toria Dock,  whence  in  a  few  days  we  started 
for  Rouen.  I  won't  go  so  far  as  saying  that 
the  engaging  of  a  man  fated  never  to  cross 
the  Western  Ocean  was  the  absolute  cause 
of  the  Franco-Canadian  Transport  Company's 
failure  to  achieve  even  a  single  passage.  It 
might  have  been  that  of  course;  but  the 
obvious,  gross  obstacle  was  clearly  the  want  of 

32 


A    PERSONAL    RECORD 

money.  Four  hundred  and  sixty  bunks  for 
emigrants  were  put  together  in  the  'tween 
decks  by  industrious  carpenters  while  we  lay 
in  the  Victoria  Dock,  but  never  an  emigrant 
turned  up  in  Rouen — of  which,  being  a  hu- 
mane person,  I  confess  I  was  glad.  Some 
gentlemen  from  Paris — I  think  there  were 
three  of  them,  and  one  was  said  to  be  the 
chairman — turned  up,  indeed,  and  went  from 
end  to  end  of  the  ship,  knocking  their  silk 
hats  cruelly  against  the  deck  beams.  I  at- 
tended them  personally,  and  I  can  vouch  for 
it  that  the  interest  they  took  in  things  was 
intelligent  enough,  though,  obviously,  they 
had  never  seen  anything  of  the  sort  before. 
Their  faces  as  they  went  ashore  wore  a  cheer- 
fully inconclusive  expression.  Notwithstand- 
ing that  this  inspecting  ceremony  was  sup- 
posed to  be  a  preliminary  to  immediate  sailing, 
it  was  then,  as  they  filed  down  our  gangway, 
that  I  received  the  inward  monition  that  no 
sailing  within  the  meaning  of  our  charter 
party  would  ever  take  place. 

It  must  be  said  that  in  less  than  three 
weeks  a  move  took  place.  When  we  first 
arrived  we  had  been  taken  up  with  much 
ceremony  well  toward  the  centre  of  the  town, 

33 


A    PERSONAL    RECORD 

and,  all  the  street  corners  being  placarded 
with  the  tricolor  posters  announcing  the 
birth  of  our  company,  the  j)etit  bourgeois  with 
his  wife  and  family  made  a  Sunday  hohday 
from  the  inspection  of  the  ship.  I  was  always 
in  evidence  in  my  best  uniform  to  give  in- 
formation as  though  I  had  been  a  Cook's 
tourists'  interpreter,  while  our  quartermasters 
reaped  a  harvest  of  small  change  from  per- 
sonally conducted  parties.  But  when  the 
move  was  made — that  move  which  carried  us 
some  mile  and  a  half  down  the  stream  to  be 
tied  up  "to  an  altogether  muddier  and  shabbier 
quay — then  indeed  the  desolation  of  solitude 
became  our  lot.  It  was  a  complete  and  sound- 
less stagnation;  for  as  we  had  the  ship  ready 
for  sea  to  the  smallest  detail,  as  the  frost  was 
hard  and  the  days  short,  we  were  absolutely 
idle — idle  to  the  point  of  blushing  with  shame 
when  the  thought  struck  us  that  all  the  time 
our  salaries  went  on.  Young  Cole  was  ag- 
grieved because,  as  he  said,  we  could  not 
enjoy  any  sort  of  fun  in  the  evening  after 
loafing  like  this  all  day:  even  the  banjo  lost 
its  charm  since  there  was  nothing  to  prevent 
his  strumming  on  it  all  the  time  between  the 
meals.    The  good  Paramor — ^he  was  really  a 

34 


A    PERSONAL    RECORD 

most  excellent  fellow — became  unhappy  as  far 
as  was  possible  to  his  cheery  nature,  till  one 
dreary  day  I  suggested,  out  of  sheer  mischief, 
that  he  should  employ  the  dormant  energies  of 
the  crew  in  hauling  both  cables  up  on  deck  and 
turning  them  end  for  end. 

For  a  moment  Mr.  Paramor  was  radiant. 
"Excellent  idea!"  but  directly  his  face  fell. 
"Why  .  .  .  Yes!  But  we  can't  make 
that  job  last  more  than  three  days,"  he  mut- 
tered, discontentedly.  I  don't  know  how  long 
he  expected  us  to  be  stuck  on  the  riverside 
outskirts  of  Rouen,  but  I  know  that  the  cables 
got  hauled  up  and  turned  end  for  end  accord- 
ing to  my  Satanic  suggestion,  put  down  again, 
and  their  very  existence  utterly  forgotten,  I 
believe,  before  a  French  river  pilot  came  on 
board  to  take  our  ship  down,  empty  as  she 
came,  into  the  Havre  roads.  You  may  think 
that  this  state  of  forced  idleness  favoured  some 
advance  in  the  fortunes  of  Almayer  and  his 
daughter.  Yet  it  was  not  so.  As  if  it  were 
some  sort  of  evil  spell,  my  banjoist  cabin- 
mate's  interruption,  as  related  above,  had 
arrested  them  short  at  the  point  of  that  fate- 
ful sunset  for  many  weeks  together.  It  was 
always  thus  with  this  book,  begun  in  '89  and 

35 


A    PERSONAL    RECORD 

finished  in  '94 — with  that  shortest  of  all 
the  novels  which  it  was  to  be  my  lot  to  write. 
Between  its  opening  exclamation  calling  Al- 
mayer  to  his  dinner  in  his  wife's  voice  and 
Abdullah's  (his  enemy)  mental  reference  to  the 
God  of  Islam — "The  Merciful,  the  Compassion- 
ate"— which  closes  the  book,  there  were  to 
come  several  long  sea  passages,  a  visit  (to 
use  the  elevated  phraseology  suitable  to  the 
occasion)  to  the  scenes  (some  of  them)  of  my 
childhood  and  the  realization  of  childhood's 
vain  words,  expressing  a  light-hearted  and  ro- 
mantic whim. 

It  was  in  1868,  when  nine  years  old  or 
thereabouts,  that  while  looking  at  a  map  of 
Africa  of  the  time  and  putting  my  finger  on 
the  blank  space  then  representing  the  un- 
solved mystery  of  that  continent,  I  said  to 
myself,  with  absolute  assurance  and  an  amaz- 
ing audacity  which  are  no  longer  in  my  char- 
acter now : 

"When  I  grow  up  I  shall  go  there '^ 
And  of  course  I  thought  no  more  about 
it  till  after  a  quarter  of  a  century  or  so  an 
opportunity  offered  to  go  there — as  if  the 
sin  of  childish  audacity  were  to  be  visited  on 
my  mature  head.     Yes.     I  did  go  there:  there 

36 


A    PERSONAL    RECORD 

being  the  region  of  Stanley  Falls,  which  in 
'68  was  the  blankest  of  blank  spaces  on  the 
earth's    figured    surface.     And    the    MS.    of 
"Almayer's  Folly/'  carried  about  me  as  if  it 
were  a  talisman  or  a  treasure,  went  there,  too. 
That  it  ever  came  out  of  there  seems  a  special 
dispensation  of  Providence,  because  a  good 
many  of  my  other  properties,  infinitely  more 
valuable  and  useful  to  me,  remained  behind 
through  unfortunate  accidents  of  transporta- 
tion.    I  call  to  mind,  for  instance,  a  specially 
awkward  turn  of  the  Congo  between  Kin- 
chassa  and  Leopoldsville — more  particularly 
when  one  had  to  take  it  at  night  in  a  big  canoe 
with  only  half  the  proper  number  of  paddlers. 
I  failed  in  being  the  second  white  man  on 
record    drowned    at    that    interesting     spot 
through  the  upsetting  of  a  canoe.     The  first 
was  a  young  Belgian  oflScer,  but  the  accident 
happened  some  months  before  my  time,  and 
he,  too,  I  believe,  was  going  home;  not  per- 
haps quite  so  ill  as  myself — ^but  still  he  was 
going  home.     I  got  round  the  turn  more  or 
less   alive,   though   I   was   too   sick   to   care 
whether  I  did  or  not,  and,  always  with  "Al- 
mayer's  Folly"  among  my  diminishing  bag- 
gage,  I   arrived   at   that   delectable   capital, 

37 


A    PERSONAL    RECORD 

Boma,  where,  before  the  departure  of  the 
steamer  which  was  to  take  me  home,  I  had  the 
time  to  wish  myself  dead  over  and  over  again 
with  perfect  sincerity.  At  that  date  there 
were  in  existence  only  seven  chapters  of 
"  Almayer's  Folly,"  but  the  chapter  in  my  his- 
tory which  followed  was  that  of  a  long,  long 
illness  and  very  dismal  convalescence.  Gen- 
eva, or  more  precisely  the  hydropathic  estab- 
lishment of  Champel,  is  rendered  forever  fa- 
mous by  the  termination  of  the  eighth  chapter 
in  the  history  of  Almayer's  decline  and  fall. 
The  events  of  the  ninth  are  inextricably 
mixed  up  with  the  details  of  the  proper  man- 
agement of  a  waterside  warehouse  owned  by  a 
certain  city  firm  whose  name  does  not  matter. 
But  that  work,  undertaken  to  accustom  myself 
again  to  the  activities  of  a  healthy  existence, 
soon  came  to  an  end.  The  earth  had  nothing 
to  hold  me  with  for  very  long.  And  then 
that  memorable  story,  like  a  cask  of  choice 
Madeira,  got  carried  for  three  years  to  and 
fro  upon  the  sea.  Whether  this  treatment 
improved  its  flavour  or  not,  of  course  I  would 
not  like  to  say.  As  far  as  appearance  is 
concerned  it  certainly  did  nothing  of  the  kind. 
The  whole  MS.  acquired  a  faded  look  and  an 

38 


A    PERSONAL    RECORD 

ancient,  yellowish  complexion.  It  became  at 
last  unreasonable  to  suppose  that  anything 
in  the  world  would  ever  happen  to  Almayer 
and  Nina.  And  yet  something  most  unlikely 
to  happen  on  the  high  seas  was  to  wake  them 
up  from  their  state  of  suspended  animation. 
What  is  it  that  Novalis  says:  "It  is  certain 
my  conviction  gains  infinitely  the  moment  an- 
other soul  will  believe  in  it."  And  what  is  a 
novel  if  not  a  conviction  of  our  fellow-men's 
existence  strong  enough  to  take  upon  itself 
a  form  of  imagined  life  clearer  than  reality 
and  whose  accumulated  verisimilitude  of  se- 
lected episodes  puts  to  shame  the  pride  of 
documentary  history.  Providence  which  saved 
my  MS.  from  the  Congo  rapids  brought  it  to 
the  knowledge  of  a  helpful  soul  far  out  on  the 
open  sea.  It  would  be  on  my  part  the  greatest 
ingratitude  ever  to  forget  the  sallow,  sunken 
face  and  the  deep-set,  dark  eyes  of  the  young 
Cambridge  man  (he  was  a  "passenger  for  his 
health"  on  board  the  good  ship  Torrens  out- 
ward bound  to  Australia)  who  was  the  first 
reader  of  "Almayer's  Folly" — the  very  first 
reader  I  ever  had.  "Would  it  bore  you  very 
much  in  reading  a  MS.  in  a  handwriting  like 
mine?"     I  asked  him  one  evening,  on  a  sud- 

89 


/ 


A    PERSONAL    RECORD 

den  impulse  at  the  end  of  a  longish  conversa- 
tion whose  subject  was  Gibbon's  History. 
Jacques  (that  was  his  name)  was  sitting  in  my 
cabin  one  stormy  dog-watch  below,  after 
bringing  me  a  book  to  read  from  his  own  trav- 
elling store. 

"Not  at  all,"  he  answered,  with  his  courte- 
ous intonation  and  a  faint  smile.  As  I  pulled 
a  drawer  open  his  suddenly  aroused  curiosity 
gave  him  a  watchful  expression.  I  wonder 
what  he  expected  to  see.  A  poem,  maybe. 
All  that's  beyond  guessing  now.  He  was 
not  a  cold,  but  a  calm  man,  still  more  subdued 
by  disease — a,  man  of  few  words  and  of  an 
unassuming  modesty  in  general  intercourse, 
but  with  something  uneommon  in  the  whole 
of  his  person  which  set  him  apart  from  the 
undistinguished  lot  of  our  sixty  passengers. 
His  eyes  had  a  thoughtful,  introspective  look. 
In  his  attractive  reserved  planner  and  in  a 
veiled  sympathetic  voice  he  asked : 

"What  is  this.?"  "It  is  a  sort  of  tale," 
I  answered,  with  an  effort.  "It  is  not  even 
finished  yet.  Nevertheless,  I  would  like  to 
know  what  you  think  of  it."  He  put  the 
MS.  in  the  breast-pocket  of  his  jacket;  I 
remember  perfectly  his  thin,  brown  fingers 

40 


A    PERSONAL    RECORD 

folding  it  lengthwise.  "I  will  read  it  to- 
morrow," he  remarked,  seizing  the  door- 
handle; and  then  watching  the  roll  of  the  ship 
for  a  propitious  moment,  he  opened  the  door 
and  was  gone.  In  the  moment  of  his  exit 
I  heard  the  sustained  booming  of  the  wind, 
the  swish  of  the  water  on  the  decks  of  the 
Torrens,  and  the  subdued,  as  if  distant,  roar 
of  the  rising  sea.  I  noted  the  growing  dis- 
quiet in  the  great  restlessness  of  the  ocean, 
and  responded  professionally  to  it  with  the 
thought^that  at  eight  o'clock,  in  another  half- 
hour  or  so  at  the  farthest,  the  topgallant- 
sails  would  have  to  come  off  the  ship. 

Next  day,  but  this  time  in  the  first  dog- 
watch, Jacques  entered  my  cabin.  He  had  a 
thick  woollen  muffler  round  his  throat,  and 
the  MS.  was  in  his  hand.  He  tendered  it  to 
me  with  a  steady  look,  but  without  a  word. 
I  took  it  in  silence.  He  sat  down  on  the 
couch  and  still  said  nothing.  I  opened  and 
shut  a  drawer  under  my  desk,  on  which  a 
fiUed-up  log-slate  lay  wide  open  in  its  wooden 
frame  waiting  to  be  copied  neatly  into  the 
sort  of  book  I  was  accustomed  to  write  with 
care,  the  ship's  log-book.  I  turned  my  back 
squarely  on  the  desk.     And  even  then  Jacques 

41 


A    PERSONAL    RECORD 

never  offered  a  word.  "Well,  what  do  you 
say?  "  I  asked  at  last.  " Is  it  worth  finishing?" 
This  question  expressed  exactly  the  whole  of 
my  thoughts. 

"Distinctly,"  he  answered,  in  his  sedate, 
veiled  voice,  and  then  coughed  a  little. 

"Were  you  interested?"  I  inquired  further, 
almost  in  a  whisper. 

"Very  much!" 

In  a  pause  I  went  on  meeting  instinctively 
the  heavy  rolling  of  the  ship,  and  Jacques 
put  his  feet  upon  the  couch.  The  curtain  of 
my  bed-place  swung  to  and  fro  as  if  it  were 
a  punkah,  the  bulkhead  lamp  circled  in  its 
gimbals,  and  now  and  then  the  cabin  door 
rattled  slightly  in  the  gusts  of  wind.  It  was 
in  latitude  40  south,  and  nearly  in  the  longi- 
tude of  Greenwich,  as  far  as  I  can  remember, 
that  these  quiet  rites  of  Almayer's  and  Nina's 
resurrection  were  taking  place.  In  the  pro- 
longed silence  it  occurred  to  me  that  there  was 
a  good  deal  of  retrospective  writing  in  the 
story  as  far  as  it  went.  Was  it  intelligible 
in  its  action,  I  asked  myself,  as  if  already  the 
story-teller  were  being  born  into  the  body  of 
a  seaman.  But  I  heard  on  deck  the  whistle 
of  the  oflScer  of  the  watch  and  remained  on 

42 


A    PERSONAL    RECORD 

the  alert  to  catch  the  order  that  was  to 
follow  this  call  to  attention.  It  reached  me 
as  a  faint,  fierce  shout  to  '* Square  the  yards." 
"Aha!"  I  thought  to  myself,  "a  westerly 
blow  coming  on."  Then  I  turned  to  my  very 
first  reader,  who,  alas!  was  not  to  live  long 
enough  to  know  the  end  of  the  tale. 

*'Now  let  me  ask  you  one  more  thing: 
is  the  story  quite  clear  to  you  as  it  stands.^" 

He  raised  his  dark,  gentle  eyes  to  my  face 
and  seemed  surprised. 

"Yes!     Perfectly." 

This  was  all  I  was  to  hear  from  his  lips 
concerning  the  merits  of  "Almayer's  Folly." 
We  never  spoke  together  of  the  book  again. 
A  long  period  of  bad  weather  set  in  and  I 
had  no  thoughts  left  but  for  my  duties,  while 
poor  Jacques  caught  a  fatal  cold  and  had  to 
keep  close  in  his  cabin.  When  we  arrived  in 
Adelaide  the  first  reader  of  my  prose  went  at 
once  up-country,  and  died  rather  suddenly  in 
the  end,  either  in  Australia  or  it  may  be  on  the 
passage  while  going  home  through  the  Suez 
Canal.  I  am  not  sure  which  it  was  now,  and 
I  do  not  think  I  ever  heard  precisely;  though 
I  made  inquiries  about  him  from  some  of  our 
return  passengers  who,  wandering  about  to 

4S 


A    PERSONAL    RECORD 

"see  the  country"  during  the  ship's  stay- 
in  port,  had  come  upon  him  here  and  there. 
At  last  we  sailed,  homeward  bound,  and 
still  not  one  line  was  added  to  the  careless 
scrawl  of  the  many  pages  which  poor  Jacques 
had  had  the  patience  to  read  with  the  very 
shadows  of  Eternity  gathering  already  in  the 
hollows  of  his  kind,  steadfast  eyes. 

The  purpose  instilled  into  me  by  his  simple 
and  final  ''Distinctly"  remained  dormant,  yet 
alive  to  await  its  opportunity.  I  dare  say  I 
am  compelled — unconsciously  compelled — ^now 
to  write  volume  after  volume,  as  in  past  years 
I  was  compelled  to  go  to  sea  voyage  after 
voyage.  Leaves  must  follow  upon  one  an- 
other as  leagues  used  to  follow  in  the  days 
gone  by,  on  and  on  to  the  appointed  end, 
which,  being  Truth  itself,  is  One — one  for  all 
men  and  for  all  occupations. 

I  do  not  know  which  of  the  two  impulses 
has  appeared  more  mysterious  and  more 
wonderful  to  me.  Still,  in  writing,  as  in  go- 
ing to  sea,  I  had  to  wait  my  opportunity. 
Let  me  confess  here  that  I  was  never  one 
of  those  wonderful  fellows  that  would  go 
afloat  in  a  wash-tub  for  the  sake  of  the  fun, 
and  if  I  may  pride  myself  upon  my  consis- 

44 


A    PERSONAL    RECORD 

tency,  it  was  ever  just  the  same  with  my 
writing.  Some  men,  I  have  heard,  write  in 
railway  carriages,  and  could  do  it,  perhaps, 
sitting  crossed-legged  on  a  clothes-line;  but 
I  must  confess  that  my  sybaritic  disposition 
will  not  consent  to  write  without  something 
at  least  resembling  a  chair.  Line  by  line, 
rather  than  page  by  page,  was  the  growth  of 
"Almayer's  Folly." 

And  so  it  happened  that  I  very  nearly  lost 
the  MS.,  advanced  now  to  the  first  words 
of  the  ninth  chapter,  in  the  Friedrichstrasse 
railway  station  (that's  in  Berlin,  you  know), 
on  my  way  to  Poland,  or  more  precisely  to 
Ukraine.  On  an  early,  sleepy  morning  chang- 
ing trains  in  a  hurry  I  left  my  Gladstone  bag 
in  a  refreshment-room.  A  worthy  and  intel- 
ligent Koffertrdger  rescued  it.  Yet  in  my 
anxiety  I  was  not  thinking  of  the  MS.,  but 
of  all  the  other  things  that  were  packed  in  the 
bag. 

Li  Warsaw,  where  I  spent  two  days,  those 
wandering  pages  were  never  exposed  to  the 
light,  except  once  to  candle-light,  while  the 
bag  lay  open  on  the  chair.  I  was  dressing 
hurriedly  to  dine  at  a  sporting  club.  A  friend 
of  my  childhood  (he  had  been  in  the  Diplo- 

4J 


A    PERSONAL    RECORD 

matic  Service,  but  had  turned  to  growing 
wheat  on  paternal  acres,  and  we  had  not  seen 
each  other  for  over  twenty  years)  was  sitting 
on  the  hotel  sofa  waiting  to  carry  me  off 
there. 

"You  might  tell  me  something  of  your  life 
while  you  are  dressing,"  he  suggested,  kindly. 

I  do  not  think  I  told  him  much  of  my  life- 
story  either  then  or  later.  The  talk  of  the 
select  little  party  with  which  he  made  me 
dine  was  extremely  animated  and  embraced 
most  subjects  under  heaven,  from  big-game 
shooting  in  Africa  to  the  last  poem  published 
in  a  very  modernist  review,  edited  by  the 
very  young  and  patronized  by  the  highest 
society.  But  it  never  touched  upon  "Al- 
mayer's  Folly,"  and  next  morning,  in  uninter- 
rupted obscurity,  this  inseparable  companion 
went  on  rolling  with  me  in  the  southeast  direc- 
tion toward  the  government  of  Kiev. 

At  that  time  there  was  an  eight  hours' 
drive,  if  not  more,  from  the  railway  station  to 
the  country-house  which  was  my  destination. 

"Dear  boy"  (these  words  were  always 
written  in  English),  so  ran  the  last  letter 
from  that  house  received  in  London — "Get 
yourself  driven  to  the  only  inn  in  the  place, 

46 


A    PERSONAL    RECORD 

dine  as  well  as  you  can,  and  some  time  in  the 
evening  my  own  confidential  servant,  facto- 
tum and  majordomo,  a  Mr.  V.  S.  (I  warn  you 
he  is  of  noble  extraction),  will  present  him- 
self before  you,  reporting  the  arrival  of  the 
small  sledge  which  will  take  you  here  on  the 
next  day.  I  send  with  him  my  heaviest  fur, 
which  I  suppose  with  such  overcoats  as  you 
may  have  with  you  will  keep  you  from 
freezing  on  the  road." 

Sure  enough,  as  I  was  dining,  served  by  a 
Hebrew  waiter,  in  an  enormous  barn-like 
bedroom  with  a  freshly  painted  floor,  the  door 
opened  and,  in  a  travelling  costume  of  long 
boots,  big  sheepskin  cap,  and  a  short  coat 
girt  with  a  leather  belt,  the  Mr.  V.  S.  (of 
noble  extraction),  a  man  of  about  thirty- 
five,  appeared  with  an  air  of  perplexity  on 
his  open  and  mustached  countenance.  I 
got  up  from  the  table  and  greeted  him  in 
Polish,  with,  I  hope,  the  right  shade  of  con- 
sideration demanded  by  his  noble  blood  and 
his  confidential  position.  His  face  cleared 
up  in  a  wonderful  way.  It  appeared  that, 
notwithstanding  my  uncle's  earnest  assur- 
ances, the  good  fellow  had  remained  in  doubt 
of  our  understanding  each  other.     He  imag- 

47 


A    PERSONAL    RECORD 

ined  I  would  talk  to  him  in  some  foreign 
language.  I  was  told  that  his  last  words  on 
getting  into  the  sledge  to  come  to  meet  me 
shaped  an  anxious  exclamation  : 

"Well!  Well!  Here  I  am  going,  but  God 
only  knows  how  I  am  to  make  myseK  under- 
stood to  our  master's  nephew." 

We  understood  each  other  very  well  from 
the  first.  He  took  charge  of  me  as  if  I  were 
not  quite  of  age.  I  had  a  delightful  boyish 
feeling  of  coming  home  from  school  when  he 
muffled  me  up  next  morning  in  an  enormous 
bearskin  travelling-coat  and  took  his  seat 
protectively  by  my  side.  The  sledge  was  a 
very  small  one,  and  it  looked  utterly  insig- 
nificant, almost  like  a  toy  behind  the  four 
big  bays  harnessed  two  and  two.  We  three, 
counting  the  coachman,  filled  it  completely. 
He  was  a  young  fellow  with  clear  blue  eyes; 
the  high  collar  of  his  livery  fur  coat  framed 
his  cheery  countenance  and  stood  all  round 
level  with  the  top  of  his  head. 

"Now,  Joseph,"  my  companion  addressed 
him,  "do  you  think  we  shall  manage  to  get 
home  before  six.^^"  His  answer  was  that  we 
would  surely,  with  God's  help,  and  providing 
there  were  no  heavy  drifts  in  the  long  stretch 

48 


A    PERSONAL    RECORD 

between  certain  villages  whose  names  came 
with  an  extremely  familiar  sound  to  my  ears. 
He  turned  out  an  excellent  coachman,  with 
an  instinct  for  keeping  the  road  among  the 
snow-covered  fields  and  a  natural  gift  of 
getting  the  best  out  of  his  horses. 

"He  is  the  son  of  that  Joseph  that  I  sup- 
pose the  Captain  remembers.  He  who  used 
to  drive  the  Captain's  late  grandmother  of 
holy  memory,"  remarked  V.  S.,  busy  tucking 
fur  rugs  about  my  feet. 

I  remembered  perfectly  the  trusty  Joseph 
who  used  to  drive  my  grandmother.  Why! 
he  it  was  who  let  me  hold  the  reins  for  the 
first  time  in  my  life  and  allowed  me  to  play 
with  the  great  four-in-hand  whip  outside  the 
doors  of  the  coach-house. 

"What  became  of  him?"  I  asked.  "He 
is  no  longer  serving,  I  suppose." 

"He  served  our  master,"  was  the  reply. 
"But  he  died  of  cholera  ten  years  ago  now — 
that  great  epidemic  that  we  had.  And  his  wife 
died  at  the  same  time — the  whole  houseful 
of  them,  and  this  is  the  only  boy  that  was  left." 

The  MS.  of  " Almayer's  Folly"  was  reposing 
in  the  bag  under  our  feet. 

I  saw  again  the  sun  setting  on  the  plains 
49 


A    PERSONAL    RECORD 

as  I  saw  it  in  the  travels  of  my  childhood. 
It  set,  clear  and  red,  dipping  into  the  snow 
in  full  view  as  if  it  were  setting  on  the  sea. 
It  was  twenty-three  years  since  I  had  seen 
the  sun  set'over  that  land;  and  we  drove  on 
in  the  darkness  which  fell  swiftly  upon  the 
livid  expanse  of  snows  till,  out  of  the  waste  of 
a  white  earth  joining  a  bestarred  sky,  surged 
up  black  shapes,  the  clumps  of  trees  about 
a  village  of  the  Ukrainian  plain.  A  cottage 
or  two  glided  by,  a  low  interminable  wall, 
and  then,  glimmering  and  winking  through  a 
screen  of  fir-trees,  the  lights  of  the  master's 
house. 

That  very  evening  the  wandering  MS.  of 
"Almayer's  Folly  "  was  unpacked  and  unosten- 
tatiously laid  on  the  writing-table  in  my  room, 
the  guest-room  which  had  been,  I  was  in- 
formed in  an  affectionately  careless  tone, 
awaiting  me  for  some  fifteen  years  or  so.  It 
attracted  no  attention  from  the  affectionate 
presence  hovering  round  the  son  of  the  fa- 
vourite sister. 

"You  won't  have  many  hours  to  your- 
seK  while  you  are  staying  with  me,  brother," 
he  said — this  form  of  address  borrowed  from 
the  speech  of  our  peasants  being  the  usual 

50 


A    PERSONAL    RECORD 

expression  of  the  highest  good  humour  in  a 
moment  of  affectionate  elation.  "I  shall  be 
always  coming  in  for  a  chat." 

As  a  matter  of  fact,  we  had  the  whole  house 
to  chat  in,  and  were  everlastingly  intruding 
upon  each  other.  I  invaded  the  retirement  of 
his  study  where  "the  principal  feature  was  a 
colossal  silver  inkstand  presented  to  him  on 
his  fiftieth  year  by  a  subscription  of  all  his 
wards  then  living.  He  had  been  guardian  of 
many  orphans  of  land-owning  families  from 
the  three  southern  provinces — ever  since  the 
year  1860.  Some  of  them  had  been  my  school- 
fellows and  playmates,  but  not  one  of  them, 
girls  or  boys,  that  I  know  of  has  ever  written 
a  novel.  One  or  two  were  older  than  myself 
— considerably  older,  too.  One  of  them,  a 
visitor  I  remember  in  my  early  years,  was  the 
man  who  first  put  me  on  horseback,  and  his 
four-horse  bachelor  turnout,  his  perfect  horse- 
manship and  general  skill  in  manly  exercises, 
was  one  of  my  earliest  admirations.  I  seem 
to  remember  my  mother  looking  on  from 
a  colonnade  in  front  of  the  dining-room 
windows  as  I  was  lifted  upon  the  pony, 
held,  for  all  I  know,  by  the  very  Joseph — 
the  groom  attached  specially  to  my  grand- 

51 


A    PERSONAL    RECORD 

mother's  service — who  died  of  cholera.  It 
was  certainly  a  young  man  in  a  dark-blue, 
tailless  coat  and  huge  Cossack  trousers,  that 
being  the  livery  of  the  men  about  the  stables. 
It  must  have  been  in  1864,  but  reckoning 
by  another  mode  of  calculating  time,  it  was 
certainly  in  the  year  in  which  my  mother 
obtained  permission  to  travel  south  and  visit 
her  family,  from  the  exile  into  which  she  had 
followed  my  father.  For  that,  too,  she  had 
had  to  ask  permission,  and  I  know  that  one  of 
the  conditions  of  that  favour  was  that  she 
should  be  treated  exactly  as  a  condemned 
exile  herself.  Yet  a  couple  of  years  later,  in 
memory  of  her  eldest  brother,  who  had  served 
in  the  Guards  and  dying  early  left  hosts  of 
friends  and  a  loved  memory  in  the  great 
world  of  St.  Petersburg,  some  influential  per- 
sonages procured  for  her  this  permission — it 
was  officially  called  the  "Highest  Grace" — 
of  a  four  months'  leave  from  exile. 

This  is  also  the  year  in  which  I  first  begin 
to  remember  my  mother  with  more  distinct- 
ness than  a  mere  loving,  wide-browed,  silent, 
protecting  presence,  whose  eyes  had  a  sort 
of  commanding  sweetness;  and  I  also  re- 
member the  great  gathering  of  all  the  relations 

52 


A    PERSONAL    RECORD 

from  near  and  far,  and  the  gray  heads  of  the 
family  friends  paying  her  the  homage  of 
respect  and  love  in  the  house  of  her  favourite 
brother,  who,  a  few  years  later,  was  to  take 
the  place  for  me  of  both  my  parents. 

I  did  not  understand  the  tragic  significance 
of  it  all  at  the  time,  though,  indeed,  I  remem- 
ber that  doctors  also  came.  There  were  no 
signs  of  invalidism  about  her — but  I  think 
that  already  they  had  pronounced  her  doom 
unless  perhaps  the  change  to  a  southern  cli- 
mate could  re-establish  her  declining  strength. 
For  me  it  seems  the  very  happiest  period  of  my 
existence.  There  was  my  cousin,  a  delight- 
ful, quick-tempered  little  girl,  some  months 
younger  than  myself,  whose  life,  lovingly 
watched  over  as  if  she  were  a  royal  princess, 
came  to  an  end  with  her  fifteenth  year. 
There  were  other  children,  too,  many  of 
whom  are  dead  now,  and  not  a  few  whose 
very  names  I  have  forgotten.  Over  all  this  \ 
hung  the  oppressive  shadow  of  the  great 
Russian  empire — the  shadow  lowering  with 
the  darkness  of  a  new-born  national  hatred 
fostered  by  the  Moscow  school  of  journalists 
against  the  Poles  after  the  ill-omened  rising 
of  1863. 

53 


A    PERSONAL    RECORD 

This  is  a  far  cry  back  from  the  MS.  of 
''Almayer's  Folly,"  but  the  public  record  of 
these  formative  impressions  is  not  the  whim 
of  an  uneasy  egotism.  These,  too,  are  things 
human,  already  distant  in  their  appeal.  It 
is  meet  that  something  more  should  be  left 
for  the  novelist's  children  than  the  colours  and 
figures  of  his  own  hard-won  creation.  That 
which  in  their  grown-up  years  may  appear 
to  the  world  about  them  as  the  most  enigmatic 
side  of  their  natures  and  perhaps  must  remain 
forever  obscure  even  to  themselves,  will  be 
their  unconscious  response  to  the  still  voice 
of  that  inexorable  past  from  which  his  work 
of  fiction  and  their  personalities  are  remotely 
derived. 

Only  in  men's  imagination  does  every 
truth  find  an  effective  and  undeniable  exist- 
ence. Imagination,  not  invention,  is  the 
supreme  master  of  art  as  of  life.  An  imagina- 
tive and  exact  rendering  of  authentic  memo- 
ries may  serve  worthily  that  spirit  of  piety 
toward  all  things  human  which  sanctions  the 
conceptions  of  a  writer  of  tales,  and  the 
emotions  of  the  man  reviewing  his  own 
experience. 


54 


n 

AS  I  have  said,  I  was  unpacking  my 
/%  luggage  after  a  journey  from  London 
JLjL  into  Ukraine.  The  MS.  of  "Almay- 
er's  Folly" — my  companion  already  for  some 
three  years  or  more,  and  then  in  the  ninth 
chapter  of  its  age — was  deposited  unostenta- 
tiously on  the  writing-table  placed  between 
two  windows.  It  didn't  occur  to  me  to  put 
it  away  in  the  drawer  the  table  was  fitted  with, 
but  my  eye  was  attracted  by  the  good  form  of 
the  same  drawer's  brass  handles.  Two  candel- 
abra, with  four  candles  each,  lighted  up  fes- 
tally the  room  which  had  waited  so  many  years 
for  the  wandering  nephew.  The  blinds  were 
down. 

Within  five  hundred  yards  of  the  chair  on 
which  I  sat  stood  the  first  peasant  hut  of  the 
village — part  of  my  maternal  grandfather's 
estate,  the  only  part  remaining  in  the  posses- 
sion of  a  member  of  the  family;  and  beyond 
the  village  in  the  limitless  blackness  of  a  win- 
ter's night  there  lay  the  great  unf  enced  fields — • 

55 


A    PERSONAL    RECORD 

not  a  flat  and  severe  plain,  but  a  kindly  bread- 
giving  land  of  low  rounded  ridges,  all  white 
now,  with  the  black  patches  of  timber  nestling 
in  the  hollows.  The  road  by  which  I  had 
come  ran  through  the  village  with  a  turn  just 
outside  the  gates  closing  the  short  drive. 
Somebody  was  abroad  on  the  deep  snow- 
track;  a  quick  tinkle  of  bells  stole  gradually 
into  the  stillness  of  the  room  like  a  tuneful 
whisper. 

My  unpacking  had  been  watched  over  by 
the  servant  who  had  come  to  help  me,  and, 
for  the  most  part,  had  been  standing  atten- 
tive but  unnecessary  at  the  door  of  the  room. 
I  did  not  want  him  in  the  least,  but  I  did  not 
like  to  tell  him  to  go  away.  He  was  a  young 
fellow,  certainly  more  than  ten  years  younger 
than  myself;  I  had  not  been — I  won't  say  in 
that  place,  but  within  sixty  miles  of  it,  ever 
since  the  year  '67;  yet  his  guileless  physiog- 
nomy of  the  open  peasant  type  seemed 
strangely  familiar.  It  was  quite  possible 
that  he  might  have  been  a  descendant,  a  son, 
or  even  a  grandson,  of  the  servants  whose 
friendly  faces  had  been  familiar  to  me  in  my 
early  childhood.  As  a  matter  of  fact  he  had 
no  such  claim  on  my  consideration.     He  was 

50 


A    PERSONAL    RECORD 

the  product  of  some  village  near  by  and 
was  there  on  his  promotion,  having  learned 
the  service  in  one  or  two  houses  as  pantry- 
boy.     I  know  this  because  I  asked  the  worthy 

V next  day.     I  might  well  have  spared  the 

question.  I  discovered  before  long  that  all 
the  faces  about  the  house  and  all  the  faces  in 
the  village:  the  grave  faces  with  long  mus- 
taches of  the  heads  of  families,  the  downy 
faces  of  the  young  men,  the  faces  of  the  little 
fair-haired  children,  the  handsome,  tanned, 
wide-browed  faces  of  the  mothers  seen  at  the 
doors  of  the  huts,  were  as  familiar  to  me  as 
though  I  had  known  them  all  from  childhood 
and  my  childhood  were  a  matter  of  the  day 
before  yesterday. 

The  tinkle  of  the  traveller's  bells,  after 
growing  louder,  had  faded  away  quickly,  and 
the  tumult  of  barking  dogs  in  the  village  had 
calmed  down  at  last.  My  uncle,  lounging  in 
the  corner  of  a  small  couch,  smoked  his  long 
Turkish  chibouk  in  silence. 

"This  is  an  extremely  nice  writing-table 
you  have  got  for  my  room,"  I  remarked. 

"It  is  really  your  property,"  he  said, 
keeping  his  eyes  on  me,  with  an  interested 
and  wistful  expression,  as  he  had  done  ever 

57 


A    PERSONAL    RECORD 

since  I  had  entered  the  house.  "Forty  years 
ago  your  mother  used  to  write  at  this  very 
table.  In  our  house  in  Oratow,  it  stood  in 
the  httle  sitting-room  which,  by  a  tacit  ar- 
rangement, was  given  up  to  the  girls — I  mean 
to  your  mother  and  her  sister  who  died  so 
young.  It  was  a  present  to  them  jointly 
from  your  imcle  Nicholas  B.  when  your 
mother  was  seventeen  and  your  aunt  two 
years  younger.  She  was  a  very  dear,  de- 
lightful girl,  that  aunt  of  yours,  of  whom  I 
suppose  you  know  nothing  more  than  the 
name.  She  did  not  shine  so  much  by  per- 
sonal beauty  and  a  cultivated  mind  in  which 
your  mother  was  far  superior.  It  was  her 
good  sense,  the  admirable  sweetness  of  her 
nature,  her  exceptional  facility  and  ease  in 
daily  relations,  that  endeared  her  to  every- 
body. Her  death  was  a  terrible  grief  and  a 
serious  moral  loss  for  us  all.  Had  she  lived 
she  would  have  brought  the  greatest  blessings 
to  the  house  it  would  have  been  her  lot  to 
enter,  as  wife,  mother,  and  mistress  of  a 
household.  She  would  have  created  round 
herself  an  atmosphere  of  peace  and  content 
which  only  those  who  can  love  unselfishly 
are    able    to    evoke.     Your    mother-— of    far 

58 


A    PERSONAL    RECORD 

greater  beauty,  exceptionally  distinguished 
in  person,  manner,  and  intellect — had  a  less 
easy  disposition.  Being  more  brilliantly  gifted, 
she  also  expected  more  from  life.  At  that 
trying  time  especially,  we  were  greatly  con- 
cerned about  her  state.  Suffering  in  her 
health  from  the  shock  of  her  father's  death 
(she  was  alone  in  the  house  with  him  when 
he  died  suddenly),  she  was  torn  by  the  in- 
ward struggle  between  her  love  for  the  man 
whom  she  was  to  marry  in  the  end  and  her 
knowledge  of  her  dead  father's  declared 
objection  to  that  match.  Unable  to  bring 
herself  to  disregard  that  cherished  memory 
and  that  judgment  she  had  always  respected 
and  trusted,  and,  on  the  other  hand,  feeling 
the  impossibility  to  resist  a  sentiment  so 
deep  and  so  true,  she  could  not  have  been 
expected  to  preserve  her  mental  and  moral  / 
balance.  At  war  with  herself,  she  could  "^ 
not  give  to  others  that  feeling  of  peace 
which  was  not  her  own.  It  was  only  later, 
when  united  at  last  with  the  man  of  her 
choice,  that  she  developed  those  uncommon 
gifts  of  mind  and  heart  which  compelled 
the  respect  and  admiration  even  of  our 
foes.     Meeting  with  calm  fortitude  the  cruel 

59 


A    PERSONAL    RECORD 

trials  of  a  life  reflecting  all  the  national  and 
social  misfortunes  of  the  community,  she 
realized  the  highest  conceptions  of  duty  as 
a  wife,  a  mother,  and  a  patriot,  sharing  the 
exile  of  her  husband  and  representing  nobly 
the  ideal  of  Polish  womanhood.  Our  uncle 
Nicholas  was  not  a  man  very  accessible  to 
feelings  of  affection.  Apart  from  his  wor- 
ship for  Napoleon  the  Great,  he  loved  really, 
I  believe,  only  three  people  in  the  world: 
his  mother — ^your  great-grandmother,  whom 
you  have  seen  but  cannot  possibly  remem- 
ber; his  brother,  our  father,  in  whose  house 
he  lived  for  so  many  years;  and  of  all  of 
us,  his  nephews  and  nieces  grown  up  around 
him,  your  mother  alone.  The  modest,  lov- 
able qualities  of  the  youngest  sister  he  did 
not  seem  able  to  see.  It  was  I  who  felt 
most  profoundly  this  unexpected  stroke  of 
death  falling  upon  the  family  less  than  a 
year  after  I  had  become  its  head.  It  was 
terribly  unexpected.  Driving  home  one  win- 
try afternoon  to  keep  me  company  in  our 
empty  house,  where  I  had  to  remain  per- 
manently administering  the  estate  and  at- 
tending to  the  complicated  affairs — (the  girls 
took   it   in   turn  week   and   week   about) — 

60 


A    PERSONAL    RECORD 

driving,  as  I  said,  from  the  house  of  the 
Countess  Tekla  Potocka,  where  our  invaHd 
mother  was  staying  then  to  be  near  a  doctor, 
they  lost  the  road  and  got  stuck  in  a  snow- 
drift. She  was  alone  with  the  coachman  and 
old  Valery,  the  personal  servant  of  our  late 
father.  Impatient  of  delay  while  they  were 
trying  to  dig  themselves  out,  she  jumped  out 
of  the  sledge  and  went  to  look  for  the  road 
herself.  All  this  happened  in  '51,  not  ten 
miles  from  the  house  in  which  we  are  sit- 
ting now.  The  road  was  soon  found,  but 
snow  had  begun  to  fall  thickly  again,  and 
they  were  four  more  hours  getting  home. 
Both  the  men  took  off  their  sheepskin- 
lined  greatcoats  and  used  all  their  own  rugs 
to  wrap  her  up  against  the  cold,  notwith- 
standing her  protests,  positive  orders,  and 
even  struggles,  as  Valery  afterward  related 
to  me.  *How  could  I,'  he  remonstrated  with 
her,  'go  to  meet  the  blessed  soul  of  my  late 
master  if  I  let  any  harm  come  to  you  while 
there's  a  spark  of  life  left  in  my  body?' 
When  they  reached  home  at  last  the  poor 
old  man  was  stiff  and  speechless  from  ex- 
posure, and  the  coachman  was  in  not  much 
better  plight,  though  he  had  the  strength  to 

61 


A    PERSONAL    RECORD 

drive  round  to  the  stables  himself.  To  my 
reproaches  for  venturing  out  at  all  in  such 
weather,  she  answered,  characteristically,  that 
she  could  not  bear  the  thought  of  abandon- 
ing me  to  my  cheerless  solitude.  It  is  in- 
comprehensible how  it  was  that  she  was 
allowed  to  start.  I  suppose  it  had  to  be! 
She  made  light  of  the  cough  which  came  on 
next  day,  but  shortly  afterward  inflamma- 
tion of  the  lungs  set  in,  and  in  three  weeks 
she  was  no  more!  She  was  the  first  to  be 
taken  away  of  the  young  generation  under 
my  care.  Behold  the  vanity  of  all  hopes  and 
fears!  I  was  the  most  frail  at  birth  of  all 
the  children.  For  years  I  remained  so  deli- 
cate that  my  parents  had  but  little  hope  of 
bringing  me  up;  and  yet  I  have  survived 
five  brothers  and  two  sisters,  and  many  of 
my  contemporaries;  I  have  outlived  my  wife 
and  daughter,  too — and  from  all  those  who 
have  had  some  knowledge  at  least  of  these 
old  times  you  alone  are  left.  It  has  been 
my  lot  to  lay  in  an  early  grave  many  honest 
hearts,  many  brilliant  promises,  many  hopes 
full  of  life." 

He    got    up  briskly,   sighed,   and   left   me 
saying,    "We   will   dine   in   half   an   hour." 

6£ 


A    PERSONAL    RECORD 

Without  moving,  I  listened  to  his  quick 
steps  resounding  on  the  waxed  floor  of  the 
next  room,  traversing  the  anteroom  Hned 
with  bookshelves,  where  he  paused  to  put 
his  chibouk  in  the  pipe-stand  before  passing 
into  the  drawing-room  (these  were  all  en 
suite)  ^  where  he  became  inaudible  on  the 
thick  carpet.  But  I  heard  the  door  of  his 
study-bedroom  close.  He  was  then  sixty- 
two  years  old  and  had  been  for  a  quarter 
of  a  century  the  wisest,  the  firmest,  the  most 
indulgent  of  guardians,  extending  over  me  a 
paternal  care  and  affection,  a  moral  support 
which  I  seemed  to  feel  always  near  me  in  the 
most  distant  parts  of  the  earth. 

As  to  Mr.  Nicholas  B.,  sub-lieutenant  of 
1808,  lieutenant  of  1813  in  the  French  army, 
and  for  a  short  time  Officier  d'Ordonnance 
of  Marshal  Marmont;  afterward  captain  in 
the  2d  Regiment  of  Mounted  Rifles  in  the 
Polish  army — such  as  it  existed  up  to  1830 
in  the  reduced  kingdom  established  by  the 
Congress  of  Vienna — I  must  say  that  from 
all  that  more  distant  past,  known  to  me 
traditionally  and  a  little  de  visu,  and  called 
out  by  the  words  of  the  man  just  gone  away, 
he  remains  the  most  incomplete  figure.     It 

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A    PERSONAL    RECORD 

is  obvious  that  I  must  have  seen  him  in  '64, 
for  it  is  certain  that  he  would  not  have 
missed  the  opportunity  of  seeing  my  mother 
for  what  he  must  have  known  would  be  the 
last  time.  From  my  early  boyhood  to  this 
day,  if  I  try  to  call  up  his  image,  a  sort  of 
mist  rises  before  my  eyes,  mist  in  which  I 
perceive  vaguely  only  a  neatly  brushed  head  of 
white  hair  (which  is  exceptional  in  the  case 
of  the  B.  family,  where  it  is  the  rule  for 
men  to  go  bald  in  a  becoming  manner  before 
thirty)  and  a  thin,  curved,  dignified  nose, 
a  feature  in  strict  accordance  with  the  physical 
tradition  of  the  B.  family.  But  it  is  not  by 
these  fragmentary  remains  of  perishable  mor- 
tality that  he  lives  in  my  memory.  I  knew, 
at  a  very  early  age,  that  my  granduncle 
Nicholas  B.  was  a  Knight  of  the  Legion  of 
Honour  and  that  he  had  also  the  Polish  Cross 
for  valour  Virtuti  Militari.  The  knowledge  of 
these  glorious  facts  inspired  in  me  an  admiring 
veneration;  yet  it  is  not  that  sentiment,  strong 
as  it  was,  which  resumes  for  me  the  force  and 
the  significance  of  his  personality.  It  is  over- 
borne by  another  and  complex  impression  of 
awe,  compassion,  and  horror.  Mr.  Nicholas 
B.  remains  for  me  the  unfortunate  and  miser- 

64 


A    PERSONAL    RECORD 

able  (but  heroic)  being  who  once  upon  a  time 
had  eaten  a  dog. 

It  is  a  good  forty  years  since  I  heard  the 
tale,  and  the  effect  has  not  worn  off  yet. 
I  believe  this  is  the  very  first,  say,  realistic, 
story  I  heard  in  my  life;  but  all  the  same  I 
don't  know  why  I  should  have  been  so 
frightfully  impressed.  Of  course  I  know  what 
our  village  dogs  look  like — but  still.  .  .  . 
No!  At  this  very  day,  recalling  the  hor- 
ror and  compassion  of  my  childhood,  I 
ask  myself  whether  I  am  right  in  disclosing 
to  a  cold  and  fastidious  world  that  awful 
episode  in  the  family  history.  I  ask  myself 
— ^is  it  right? — especially  as  the  B.  family  had 
always  been  honourably  known  in  a  wide 
country-side  for  the  delicacy  of  their  tastes 
in  the  matter  of  eating  and  drinking.  But 
upon  the  whole,  and  considering  that  this 
gastronomical  degradation  overtaking  a  gal- 
lant young  officer  lies  really  at  the  door  of 
the  Great  Napoleon,  I  think  that  to  cover  it 
up  by  silence  would  be  an  exaggeration  of 
literary  restraint.  Let  the  truth  stand  here. 
The  responsibility  rests  with  the  Man  of 
St.  Helena  in  view  of  his  deplorable  levity 
in  the  conduct  of  the  Russian  campaign.     It 

65 


/ 


A    PERSONAL    RECORD 

was  during  the  memorable  retreat  from  Mos- 
cow that  Mr.  Nicholas  B.,  in  company  of 
two  brother  officers — as  to  whose  morality 
and  natural  refinement  I  know  nothing — 
bagged  a  dog  on  the  outskirts  of  a  village 
and  subsequently  devoured  him.  As  far  as 
I  can  remember  the  weapon  used  was  a 
cavalry  sabre,  and  the  issue  of  the  sporting 
episode  was  rather  more  of  a  matter  of  life 
and  death  than  if  it  had  been  an  encounter 
with  a  tiger.  A  picket  of  Cossacks  was 
sleeping  in  that  village  lost  in  the  depths  of 
the  great  Lithuanian  forest.  The  three  sports- 
men had  observed  them  from  a  hiding-place 
making  themselves  very  much  at  home  among 
the  huts  just  before  the  early  winter  darkness 
set  in  at  four  o'clock.  They  had  observed 
them  with  disgust  and,  perhaps,  with  despair. 
Late  in  the  night  the  rash  counsels  of  hunger 
overcame  the  dictates  of  prudence.  Crawling 
through  the  snow  they  crept  up  to  the  fence 
of  dry  branches  which  generally  encloses  a 
village  in  that  part  of  Lithuania.  What  they 
expected  to  get  and  in  what  manner,  and 
whether  this  expectation  was  worth  the  risk, 
goodness  only  knows.  However,  these  Cos- 
sack parties,  in  most  cases  wandering  without 

66 


A    PERSONAL    RECORD 

an  oflScer,  were  known  to  guard  themselves 
badly  and  often  not  at  all.  In  addition,  the 
village  lying  at  a  great  distance  from  the  line 
of  French  retreat,  they  could  not  suspect  the 
presence  of  stragglers  from  the  Grand  Army. 
The  three  officers  had  strayed  away  in  a 
blizzard  from  the  main  column  and  had  been 
lost  for  days  in  the  woods,  which  explains 
sufficiently  the  terrible  straits  to  which  they 
were  reduced.  Their  plan  was  to  try  and 
attract  the  attention  of  the  peasants  in  that 
one  of  the  huts  which  was  nearest  to  the  en- 
closure; but  as  they  were  preparing  to  ven- 
ture into  the  very  jaws  of  the  lion,  so  to 
speak,  a  dog  (it  is  mighty  strange  that  there 
was  but  one),  a  creature  quite  as  formidable 
under  the  circumstances  as  a  lion,  began  to 
bark  on  the  other  side  of  the  fence.     .     ,     • 

At  this  stage  of  the  narrative,  which  I 
heard  many  times  (by  request)  from  the 
lips  of  Captain  Nicholas  B.'s  sister-in-law, 
my  grandmother,  I  used  to  tremble  with 
excitement. 

The  dog  barked.  And  if  he  had  done  no 
more  than  bark,  three  officers  of  the  Great 
Napoleon's  army  would  have  perished  hon- 
ourably on  the  points   of   Cossacks'   lances, 

67 


A    PERSONAL    RECORD 

or  perchance  escaping  the  chase  would  have 
died  decently  of  starvation.  But  before  they 
had  time  to  think  of  running  away  that 
fatal  and  revolting  dog,  being  carried  away 
by  the  excess  of  the  zeal,  dashed  out  through 
a  gap  in  the  fence.  He  dashed  out  and  died. 
His  head,  I  understand,  was  severed  at  one 
blow  from  his  body.  I  understand  also  that 
later  on,  within  the  gloomy  solitudes  of  the 
snow-laden  woods,  when,  in  a  sheltering  hol- 
low, a  fire  had  been  lit  by  the  party,  the 
condition  of  the  quarry  was  discovered  to 
be  distinctly  unsatisfactory.  It  was  not  thin 
— on  the  contrary,  it  seemed  unhealthily 
obese;  its  skin  showed  bare  patches  of  an 
unpleasant  character.  However,  they  had 
not  killed  that  dog  for  the  sake  of  the  pelt. 
He  was  large.  .  .  .  He  was  eaten.  .  .  . 
The  rest  is  silence.     ... 

A  silence  in  which  a  small  boy  shudders 
and  says  firmly : 

"I  could  not  have  eaten  that  dog." 
And  his  grandmother  remarks  with  a  smile: 
"Perhaps  you  don't  know  what  it  is  to 
be  hungry." 

I  have  learned  something  of  it  since.     Not 
that  I  have  been  reduced  to  eat  dog.     I  have 

68 


A    PERSONAL    RECORD 

fed  on  the  emblematical  animal,  which,  in 
the  language  of  the  volatile  Gauls,  is  called 
la  vache  enragee;  I  have  lived  on  ancient  salt 
junk,  I  know  the  taste  of  shark,  of  trepang, 
of  snake,  of  nondescript  dishes  containing 
things  without  a  name — but  of  the  Lithua- 
nian village  dog — never!  I  wish  it  to  be  dis- 
tinctly understood  that  it  is  not  I,  but  my 
granduncle  Nicholas,  of  the  Polish  landed 
gentry.  Chevalier  de  la  Legion  d'Honneur,  etc., 
who,  in  his  young  days,  had  eaten  the  Lith- 
uanian dog. 

I  wish  he  had  not.  The  childish  horror 
of  the  deed  clings  absurdly  to  the  grizzled 
man.  I  am  perfectly  helpless  against  it. 
Still,  if  he  really  had  to,  let  us  charitably 
remember  that  he  had  eaten  him  on  active 
service,  while  bearing  up  bravely  against 
the  greatest  military  disaster  of  modern  his- 
tory, and,  in  a  manner,  for  the  sake  of  his 
country.  He  had  eaten  him  to  appease  his 
hunger,  no  doubt,  but  also  for  the  sake  of 
an  unappeasable  and  patriotic  desire,  in  the 
glow  of  a  great  faith  that  lives  still,  and  in 
the  pursuit  of  a  great  illusion  kindled  like 
a  false  beacon  by  a  great  man  to  lead  astray 
the  effort  of  a  brave  nation. 


y 


A 


A    PERSONAL    RECORD 

\   Pro  patria  ! 

Looked  at  in  that  light,  it  appears  a  sweet 
and  decorous  meal. 

And  looked  at  in  the  same  light,  my  own 
diet  of  la  vacke  enragee  appears  a  fatuous 
and  extravagant  form  of  self-indulgence;  for 
why  should  I,  the  son  of  a  land  which  such 
men  as  these  have  turned  up  with  their 
plowshares  and  bedewed  with  their  blood, 
undertake  the  pursuit  of  fantastic  meals  of 
salt  junk  and  hardtack  upon  the  wide  seas? 
On  the  kindest  view  it  seems  an  unanswer- 
able question.  Alas!  I  have  the  conviction 
that  there  are  men  of  unstained  rectitude 
who  are  ready  to  murmur  scornfully  the 
word  desertion.  Thus  the  taste  of  innocent 
adventure  may  be  made  bitter  to  the  palate. 
T^e^paxt^gf^Jh^  inexpjfca^l^^  be  al- 

lowed  f ojL  in_jappiaj>sing.^^£e^.con3ji^  of  J^n 
in  a  wprld  where.,ji^_je^^lajpi§i±i^^ 
No  charge  of  faithlessness  ought  to  be  lightly 
uttered.  The  appearances  of  this  perish- 
able life  are  deceptive,  like  everything  that 
falls  under  the  judgment  of  our  imperfect 
senses.  The  inner  voice  may  remain  true 
enough  in  its  secret  counsel.  The  fidelity 
to  a  special  tradition  may  last  through  the 

70 


A    PERSONAL    RECORD 

events  of  an  unrelated  existence,  following 
faithfully,  too,  the  traced  way  of  an  inex- 
plicable impulse. 

It  would  take  too  long  to  explain  the  in- 
timate alliance  of  contradictions  in  human 
nature  which  makes  love  itself  wear  at  times 
the  desperate  shape  of  betrayal.  And  per- 
haps there  is  no  possible  explanation.  In- 
dulgence— as  somebody  said — is  the  most 
intelligent  of  all  the  virtues.  I  venture  to 
think  that  it  is  one  of  the  least  common, 
if  not  the  most  uncommon  of  all.  I  would 
not  imply  by  this  that  men  are  foolish — or 
even  most  men.  Far  from  it.  The  barber 
and  the  priest,  backed  by  the  whole  opinion 
of  the  village,  condemned  justly  the  conduct 
of  the  ingenious  hidalgo  who,  sallying  forth 
from  his  native  place,  broke  the  head  of 
the  muleteer,  put  to  death  a  flock  of  inoffen- 
sive sheep,  and  went  through  very  doleful 
experiences  in  a  certain  stable.  God  forbid 
that  an  unworthy  churl  should  escape  merited 
censure  by  hanging  on  to  the  stirrup-leather 
of  the  sublime  caballero.  His  was  a  very 
noble,  a  very  unselfish  fantasy,  fit  for  noth- 
ing except  to  raise  the  envy  of  baser  mortals. 
But  there  is  more  than  one  aspect  to  the 

71 


A    PERSONAL    RECORD 

charm  of  that  exalted  and  dangerous  figure. 
He,  too,  had  his  frailties.  After  reading  so 
many  romances  he  desired  naively  to  escape 
with  his  very  body  from  the  intolerable 
reality  of  things.  He  wished  to  meet,  eye 
to  eye,  the  valorous  giant  Brandabarbaran, 
Lord  of  Arabia,  whose  armour  is  made  of  the 
skin  of  a  dragon,  and  whose  shield,  strapped 
to  his  arm,  is  the  gate  of  a  fortified  city.  Oh, 
amiable  and  natural  weakness!  Oh,  blessed 
simplicity  of  a  gentle  heart  without  guile! 
Who  would  not  succumb  to  such  a  consoling 
temptation?  Nevertheless,  it  was  a  form  of 
self^dulgence,  and  the  ingenious  hidalgo  of 
La  Mancha  was  not  a  good  citizen.  The 
priest  and  the  barber  were  not  unreasonable 
in  their  strictures.  Without  going  so  far  as 
the  old  King  Louis-Philippe,  who  used  to 
say  in  his  exile,  "The  people  are  never  in 
fault" — one  may  admit  that  there  must  be 
some  righteousness  in  the  assent  of  a  whole 
village.  Mad !  Mad !  He  who  kept  in  pious 
meditation  the  ritual  vigil-of-arms  by  the 
well  of  an  inn  and  knelt  reverently  to  be 
knighted  at  daybreak  by  the  fat,  sly  rogue 
of  a  landlord  has  come  very  near  perfec- 
tion.    He    rides    forth,    his    head    encircled 

72 


A    PERSONAL    RECORD 

by  a  halo — the  patron  saint  of  all  lives 
spoiled  or  saved  by  the  irresistible  grace  of 
imagination.     But  he  was  not  a  good  citizen. 

Perhaps  that  and  nothing  else  was  meant  by 
the  well-remembered  exclamation  of  my  tutor. 

It  was  in  the  jolly  year  1873,  the  very 
last  year  in  which  I  have  had  a  jolly  holiday. 
There  have  been  idle  years  afterward,  jolly 
enough  in  a  way  and  not  altogether  without 
their  lesson,  but  this  year  of  which  I  speak 
was  the  year  of  my  last  school-boy  holiday. 
There  are  other  reasons  why  I  should  re- 
member that  year,  but  they  are  too  long  to 
state  formally  in  this  place.  Moreover,  they 
have  nothing  to  do  with  that  holiday.  What 
has  to  do  with  the  holiday  is  that  before 
the  day  on  which  the  remark  was  made  we 
had  seen  Vienna,  the  Upper  Danube,  Munich, 
the  Falls  of  the  Rhine,  the  Lake  of  Constance, 
— in  fact,  it  was  a  memorable  holiday  of 
travel.  Of  late  we  had  been  tramping  slowly 
up  the  Valley  of  the  Reuss.  It  was  a  de- 
lightful time.  It  was  much  more  like  a 
stroll  than  a  tramp.  I^anding  from  a  Lake  of 
Lucerne  steamer  in  Fluelen,  we  found  our- 
selves at  the  end  of  the  second  day,  with 
the  dusk  overtaking  our  leisurely  footsteps, 

73 


A'  PERSONAL    RECORD 

a  little  way  beyond  Hospenthal.  This  is 
not  the  day  on  which  the  remark  was  made: 
in  the  shadows  of  the  deep  valley  and  with 
the  habitations  of  men  left  some  way  behind, 
our  thoughts  ran  not  upon  the  ethics  of 
conduct,  but  upon  the  simpler  human  problem 
of  shelter  and  food.  There  did  not  seem 
anything  of  the  kind  in  sight,  and  we  were 
thinking  of  turning  back  when  suddenly,  at  a 
bend  of  the  road,  we  came  upon  a  building, 
ghostly  in  the  twilight. 

At  that  time  the  work  on  the  St.  Gothard 
Tunnel  was  going  on,  and  that  magnificent 
enterprise  of  burrowing  was  directly  respon- 
sible for  the  unexpected  building,  standing 
all  alone  upon  the  very  roots  of  the  moun- 
tains. It  was  long,  though  not  big  at  all; 
it  was  low;  it  was  built  of  boards,  without 
ornamentation,  in  barrack-hut  style,  with 
the  white  window-frames  quite  flush  with 
the  yellow  face  of  its  plain  front.  And  yet 
it  was  a  hotel;  it  had  even  a  name,  which  I 
have  forgotten.  But  there  was  no  gold- 
laced  doorkeeper  at  its  humble  door.  A 
plain  but  vigorous  servant-girl  answered  our 
inquiries,  then  a  man  and  woman  who  owned 
the  place   appeared.     It  was   clear   that  no 

74 


A    PERSONAL    RECORD 

travellers  were  expected,  or  perhaps  even 
desired,  in  this  strange  hostelry,  which  in  its 
severe  style  resembled  the  house  which  sur- 
mounts the  unseaworthy-looking  hulls  of  the 
toy  Noah's  Arks,  the  universal  possession  of 
European  childhood.  However,  its  roof  was 
not  hinged  and  it  was  not  full  to  the  brim  of 
slab-sided  and  painted  animals  of  wood.  Even 
the  live  tourist  animal  was  nowhere  in  evi- 
dence. We  had  something  to  eat  in  a  long, 
narrow  room  at  one  end  of  a  long,  narrow  table, 
which,  to  my  tired  perception  and  to  my  sleepy 
eyes,  seemed  as  if  it  would  tilt  up  like  a  see- 
saw plank,  since  there  was  no  one  at  the  other 
end  to  balance  it  against  our  two  dusty  and 
travel-stained  figures.  Then  we  hastened  up- 
stairs to  bed  in  a  room  smelling  of  pine 
planks,  and  I  was  fast  asleep  before  my  head 
touched  the  pillow. 

In  the  morning  my  tutor  (he  was  a  student 
of  the  Cracow  University)  woke  me  up  early, 
and  as  we  were  dressing  remarked:  "There 
seems  to  be  a  lot  of  people  staying  in  this 
hotel.  I  have  heard  a  noise  of  talking  up 
till  eleven  o'clock."  This  statement  sur- 
prised me;  I  had  heard  no  noise  whatever, 
having  slept  like  a  top. 

75 


/ 


A    PERSONAL    RECORD 

We  went  down-stairs  into  the  long  and  nar- 
row dining-room  with  its  long  and  narrow 
table.  There  were  two  rows  of  plates  on  it. 
At  one  of  the  many  curtained  windows  stood 
a  tall,  bony  man  with  a  bald  head  set  off  by 
a  bunch  of  black  hair  above  each  ear,  and 
with  a  long,  black  beard.  He  glanced  up 
from  the  paper  he  was  reading  and  seemed 
genuinely  astonished  at  our  intrusion.  By 
and  by  more  men  came  in .  Not  one  of  them 
looked  like  a  tourist.  Not  a  single  woman 
appeared.  These  men  seemed  to  know  each 
other  with  some  intimacy,  but  I  cannot  say 
they  were  a  very  talkative  lot.  The  bald- 
headed  man  sat  down  gravely  at  the  head  of 
the  table.  It  all  had  the  air  of  a  family 
party.  By  and  by,  from  one  of  the  vigor- 
ous servant-girls  in  national  costume,  we  dis- 
covered that  the  place  was  really  a  boarding- 
house  for  some  English  engineers  engaged 
at  the  works  of  the  St.  Gothard  Tunnel;  and 
I  could  listen  my  fill  to  the  sounds  of  the 
English  language,  as  far  as  it  is  used  at  a 
breakfast-table  by  men  who  do  not  believe 
in  wasting  many  words  on  the  mere  amenities 
of  life. 

This  was  my  first  contact  with  British  man* 
76 


A    PERSONAL    RECORD 

kind  apart  from  the  tourist  kind  seen  in  the 
hotels  of  Zurich  and  Lucerne — the  kind  which 
has  no  real  existence  in  a  workaday  world. 
I  know  now  that  the  bald-headed  man  spoke 
with  a  strong  Scotch  accent.  I  have  met 
many  of  his  kind  ashore  and  afloat.  The 
second  engineer  of  the  steamer  Mavis,  for 
instance,  ought  to  have  been  his  twin  brother. 
I  cannot  help  thinking  that  he  really  was, 
though  for  some  reason  of  his  own  he  assured 
me  that  he  never  had  a  twin  brother.  Any- 
way, the  deliberate,  bald-headed  Scot  with  the 
coal-black  beard  appeared  to  my  boyish  eyes 
a  very  romantic  and  mysterious  person. 

We  slipped  out  unnoticed.  Our  mapped- 
out  route  led  over  the  Furca  Pass  toward 
the  Rhone  Glacier,  with  the  further  inten- 
tion of  following  down  the  trend  of  the  Hasli 
Valley.  The  sun  was  already  declining  when 
we  found  ourselves  on  the  top  of  the  pass, 
and  the  remark  alluded  to  was  presently  ^ 
uttered.. 

We  sat '  dp wn;  by  the  side  of ,  the  road  to  ,^ 
continue  the  argument  begun  half  a  mile  or, 
so  before.     I  am  certain  it  was  an  argument, 
because  I  remember  perfectly  how  my  tutor 
argued  ajad  how  without  the  power  of  rjepljr. 


A    PERSONAL    RECORD 

I  listened,  with  my  eyes  fixed  obstinately  on 
the  ground.  A  stir  on  the  road  made  me 
look  up — and  then  I  saw  my  unforgettable 
Englishman.  There  are  acquaintances  of 
later  years,  familiars,  shipmates,  whom  I 
remember  less  clearly.  He  marched  rapidly 
toward  the  east  (attended  by  a  hang-dog 
Swiss  guide),  with  the  mien  of  an  ardent  and 
fearless  traveller.  He  was  clad  in  a  knicker- 
bocker  suit,  but  as  at  the  same  time  he  wore 
short  socks  under  his  laced  boots,  for  reasons 
which,  whether  hygienic  or  conscientious, 
were  surely  imaginative,  his  calves,  exposed 
to  the  public  gaze  and  to  the  tonic  air  of 
high  altitudes,  dazzled  the  beholder  by  the 
splendour  of  their  marble-like  condition  and 
their  rich  tone  of  young  ivory.  He  was  the 
leader  of  a  small  caravan.  The  light  of  a 
headlong,  exalted  satisfaction  with  the  world 
of  men  and  the  scenery  of  mountains  illu- 
mined his  clean-cut,  very  red  face,  his  short, 
silver-white  whiskers,  his  innocently  eager 
and  triumphant  eyes.  In  passing  he  cast  a 
glance  of  kindly  curiosity  and  a  friendly 
gleam  of  big,  sound,  shiny  teeth  toward  the 
man  and  the  boy  sitting  like  dusty  tramps 
by   the   roadside,   with   a  modest  knapsack 

78 


A    PERSONAL    RECORD 

lying  at  their  feet.  His  white  calves  twinkled 
sturdily,  the  uncouth  Swiss  guide  with  a 
surly  mouth  stalked  like  an  unwilling  bear 
at  his  elbow;  a  small  train  of  three  mules 
followed  in  single  file  the  lead  of  this  inspir- 
ing enthusiast.  Two  ladies  rode  past,  one 
behind  the  other,  but  from  the  way  they  sat 
I  saw  only  their  calm,  uniform  backs,  and 
the  long  ends  of  blue  veils  hanging  behind 
far  down  over  their  identical  hat-brims.  His 
two  daughters,  surely.  An  industrious  lug- 
gage-mule, with  unstarched  ears  and  guarded 
by  a  slouching,  sallow  driver,  brought  up 
the  rear.  My  tutor,  after  pausing  for  a  look 
and  a  faint  smile,  resumed  his  earnest  argu- 
ment. 

I  tell  you  it  was  a  memorable  year!  One 
does  not  meet  such  an  Englishman  twice  in 
a  lifetime.  Was  he  in  the  mystic  ordering 
of  common  events  the  ambassador  of  my 
future,  sent  out  to  turn  the  scale  at  ft  critical 
moment  on  the  top  of  an  Alpine  pass,  with 
the  peaks  of  the  Bernese  Oberland  for  mute 
and  solemn  witnesses.^  His  glance,  his  smile, 
the  unextinguishable  and  comic  ardour  of  his 
striving-forward  appearance,  helped  me  to 
pull    myself    together.     It    must    be    stated 

79 


A    PERSONAL    RECORD 

that  on  that  day  and  in  the  exhilarating  at- 
mosphere of  that  elevated  spot  I  had  been 
feeling  utterly  crushed.  It  was  the  year  in 
which  I  had  first  spoken  aloud  of  my  desire 
to  go  to  sea.  At  first  like  those  sounds  that, 
ranging  outside  the  scale  to  which  men's  ears 
are  attuned,  remain  inaudible  to  our  sense  of 
hearing,  this  declaration  passed  unperceived. 
It  was  as  if  it  had  not  been.  Later  on,  by 
;trying  various  tones,  I  managed  to  arouse 
here  and  there  a  surprised  momentary  atten- 
tion— the  "What  was  that  funny  noise .^" — 
sort  of  inquiry.  Later  on  it  was:  "Did 
you  hear  what  that  boy  said.f*  What  an 
extraordinary  outbreak!"  Presently  a  wave 
of  scandalized  astonishment  (it  could  not 
have  been  greater  if  I  had  announced  the 
intention  of  entering  a  Carthusian  monas- 
tery) ebbing  out  of  the  educational  and 
academical  town  of  Cracow  spread  itself 
over  several  provinces.  It  spread  itself  shal- 
low but  far-reaching.  It  stirred  up  a  mass 
of  remonstrance,  indignation,  pitying  won- 
der, bitter  irony,  and  downright  chaff.  I, 
could  hardly  breathe  under  its  weight,  and  • 
certainly  had  no  words  for  an  answer.  Peo- 
ple wondered  what  Mr.  T.  B.  would  dp  np^, 

8Q. 


A    PERSONAL    RECORD 

with  his  worrying  nephew  and,  I  dare  say, 
hoped  kindly  that  he  would  make  short  work 
of  my  nonsense. 

What  he  did  was  to  come  down  all  the 
way  from  Ukraine  to  have  it  out  with  me 
and  to  judge  by  himself,  unprejudiced,  im- 
partial, and  just,  taking  his  stand  on  the 
ground  of  wisdom  and  affection.  As  far  as 
is  possible  for  a  boy  whose  power  of  ex- 
pression is  still  unformed  I  opened  the  secret 
of  my  thoughts  to  him,  and  he  in  return 
allowed  me  a  glimpse  into  his  mind  and 
heart;  the  first  glimpse  of  an  inexhaustible 
and  noble  treasure  of  clear  thought  and  warm 
feeling,  which  through  life  was  to  be  mine 
to  draw  upon  with  a  never-deceived  love  and 
confidence.  Practically,  after  several  exhaus- 
tive conversations,  he  concluded  that  he 
would  not  have  me  later  on  reproach  him  for 
having  spoiled  my  life  by  an  unconditional 
opposition.  But  I  must  take  time  for  seri- 
ous reflection.  And  I  must  think  not  only 
of  myself  but  of  others;  weigh  the  claims  of 
affection  and  conscience  against  my  own  sin- 
cerity of  purpose.  "Think  well  what  it  all 
means  in  the  larger  issues — my  boy,"  he  ex- 
horted me,  finally,  with  special  friendliness. 

81 


w 


A    PERSONAL    RECORD 

"And  meantime  try  to  get  the  best  place 
you  can  at  the  yearly  examinations." 

The  scholastic  year  came  to  an  end.  I 
took  a  fairly  good  place  at  the  exams,  which 
for  me  (for  certain  reasons)  happened  to  be 
a  more  difficult  task  than  for  other  boys. 
In  that  respect  I  could  enter  with  a  good 
conscience  upon  that  holiday  which  was  like 
a  long  visit  pour  prendre  conge  of  the  main- 
land of  old  Europe  I  was  to  see  so  little 
of  for  the  next  four-and-twenty  years.  Such, 
however,  was  not  the  avowed  purpose  of  that 
tour.  It  was  rather,  I  suspect,  planned  in 
order  to  distract  and  occupy  my  thoughts  in 
other  directions.  Nothing  had  been  said  for 
months  of  my  going  to  sea.  But  my  attach- 
ment to  my  young  tutor  and  his  influence 
over  me  were  so  well  known  that  he  must 
have  received  a  confidential  mission  to  talk 
me  out  of  my  romantic  folly.  It  was  an  ex- 
cellently appropriate  arrangement,  as  neither 
he  nor  I  had  ever  had  a  single  glimpse 
of  the  sea  in  our  lives.  That  was  to  come 
by  and  by  for  both  of  us  in  Venice,  from  the 
outer  shore  of  Lido.  Meantime  he  had 
taken  his  mission  to  heart  so  well  that  I 
began    to    feel    crushed    before    we    reached 

8S 


A    PERSONAL    RECORD 

Zurich.  He  argued  in  railway  trains,  in  lake 
steamboats,  he  had  argued  away  for  me  the 
obhgatory  sunrise  on  the  Righi,  by  Jove! 
Of  his  devotion  to  his  unworthy  pupil  there 
can  be  no  doubt.  He  had  proved  it  already 
by  two  years  of  unremitting  and  arduous  care. 
I  could  not  hate  him.  But  he  had  been 
crushing  me  slowly,  and  when  he  started  to 
argue  on  the  top  of  the  Furca  Pass  he  was 
perhaps  nearer  a  success  than  either  he  or 
I  imagined.  I  listened  to  him  in  despairing 
silence,  feeling  that  ghostly,  unrealized,  and 
desired  sea  of  my  dreams  escape  from  the 
unnerved  grip  of  my  will. 

The  enthusiastic  old  Englishman  had  passed 
— and  the  argument  went  on.  What  reward 
could  I  expect  from  such  a  life  at  the  end  of  my 
years,  either  in  ambition,  honour,  or  conscience  .f* 
An  unanswerable  question.  But  I  felt  no 
longer  crushed.  Then  our  eyes  met  and  a 
genuine  emotion  was  visible  in  his  as  well  as  in 
mine.  The  end  came  all  at  once.  He  picked 
up  the  knapsack  suddenly  and  got  onto  his  feet. 

"You  are  an  incorrigible,  hopeless  Don 
Quixote.     That's  what  you  are." 

I  was  surprised.  I  was  only  fifteen  and 
did  not  know  what  he  meant  exactly.     But 

83 


A    PERSONAL    RECORD 

I  felt  vaguely  flattered  at  the  name  of  the 
immortal  knight  turning  up  in  connection 
with  my  own  folly,  as  some  people  would 
call  it  to  my  face  Alas!  I  don't  think 
there  was  anything  to  be  proud  of.  Mine 
was  not  the  stuff  the  protectors  of  forlorn 
damsels,  the  redressers  of  this  world's  wrong 
are  made  of;  and  my  tutor  was  the  man 
to  know  that  best.  Therein,  in  his  indigna- 
tion, he  was  superior  to  the  barber  and  the 
priest  when  he  flung  at  me  an  honoured  name 
like  a  reproach. 

I  walked  behind  him  for  full  five  minutes; 
then  without  looking  back  he  stopped.  The 
shadows  of  distant  peaks  were  lengthening 
over  the  Furca  Pass.  When  I  came  up  to  him 
he  turned  to  me  and  in  full  view  of  the  Finster- 
Aarhorn,  with  his  band  of  giant  brothers  rearing 
their  monstrous  heads  against  a  brilliant  sky, 
put  his  hand  on  my  shoulder  affectionately. 

"Well!  That's  enough.  We  will  have  no 
more  of  it." 

And  indeed  there  was  no  more  question 
of  my  mysterious  vocation  between  us.  There 
was  to  be  no  more  question  of  it  at  all,  no- 
where or  with  any  one.  We  began  the 
descent  of  the  Furca  Pass  conversing  merrily. 

84 


A    PERSONAL    RECORD 

Eleven  years  later,  month  for  month,  I  stood 
on  Tower  Hill  on  the  steps  of  the  St.  Kath- 
erine's  Dockhouse,  a  master  in  the  British 
Merchant  Service.  But  the  man  who  put 
his  hand  on  my  shoulder  at  the  top  of  the 
Furca  Pass  was  no  longer  living. 

That  very  year  of  our  travels  he  took  his 
degree  of  the  Philosophical  Faculty — and 
only  then  his  true  vocation  declared  itself. 
Obedient  to  the  call,  he  entered  at  once  upon 
the  four-year  course  of  the  Medical  Schools. 
A  day  came  when,  on  the  deck  of  a  ship 
moored  in  Calcutta,  I  opened  a  letter  telling 
me  of  the  end  of  an  enviable  existence.  He 
had  made  for  himself  a  practice  in  some 
obscure  little  town  of  Austrian  Galicia.  And 
the  letter  went  on  to  tell  me  how  all  the 
bereaved  poor  of  the  district.  Christians  and 
Jews  alike,  had  mobbed  the  good  doctor's 
coffin  with  sobs  and  lamentations  at  the  very 
gate  of  the  cemetery. 

How  short  his  years  and  how  clear  his 
vision!  What  greater  reward  in  ambition, 
honour,  and  conscience  could  he  have  hoped 
to  win  for  himself  when,  on  the  top  of  the 
Furca  Pass,  he  bade  me  look  well  to  the 
end  of  my  opening  life? 

85 


ni 


THE  devouring  in  a  dismal  forest  of  a 
luckless  Lithuanian  dog  by  my  grand- 
uncle  Nicholas  B.  in  company  of  two 
other  military  and  famished  scarecrows,  sym- 
bolized, to  my  childish  imagination,  the  whole 
horror  of  the  retreat  from  Moscow,  and  the 
immorality  of  a  conqueror's  ambition.  An  ex- 
treme distaste  for  that  objectionable  episode 
has  tinged  the  views  I  hold  as  to  the  char- 
acter and  achievements  of  Napoleon  the 
Great.  I  need  not  say  that  these  are  un- 
favourable. It  was  morally  reprehensible  for 
that  great  captain  to  induce  a  simple-minded 
Polish  gentleman  to  eat  dog  by  raising  in 
his  breast  a  false  hope  of  national  indepen- 
dence. vJt  has  been  the  fate  of  that  credulous 
nation  to  starve  for  upward  of  a  hundred 
years  on  a  diet  of  false  hopes  and — ^well — 
dog.7  It  is,  when  one  thinks  of  it,  a  sin- 
gularly poisonous  regimen.  Some  pride  in  the 
national  constitution  which  has  survived  a 
long  course  of  such  dishes  is  really  excusable. 

86 


A    PERSONAL    RECORD 

But  enough  of  generalizing.  Returning  to 
particulars,  Mr.  Nicholas  B.  confided  to  his 
sister-in-law  (my  grandmother)  in  his  mis- 
anthropically  laconic  manner  that  this  supper 
in  the  woods  had  been  nearly  "the  death  of 
him."  This  is  not  surprising.  What  sur- 
prises me  is  that  the  story  was  ever  heard 
of;  for  granduncle  Nicholas  differed  in  this 
from  the  generality  of  military  men  of  Na- 
poleon's time  (and  perhaps  of  all  time)  that 
he  did  not  like  to  talk  of  his  campaigns, 
which  began  at  Friedland  and  ended  some- 
where in  the  neighbourhood  of  Bar-le-Duc. 
His  admiration  of  the  great  Emperor  was 
unreserved  in  everything  but  expression .  Like 
the  religion  of  earnest  men,  it  was  too  pro- 
found a  sentiment  to  be  displayed  before 
a  world  of  little  faith.  Apart  from  that  he 
seemed  as  completely  devoid  of  military  anec- 
dotes as  though  he  had  hardly  ever  seen  a 
soldier  in  his  life.  Proud  of  his  decorations 
earned  before  he  was  twenty-five,  he  refused 
to  wear  the  ribbons  at  the  buttonhole  in  the 
manner  practised  to  this  day  in  Europe  and 
even  was  unwilling  to  display  the  insignia 
on  festive  occasions,  as  though  he  wished  to 
conceal  them  in  the  fear  of  appearing  boastful. 

87 


A    PERSONAL    RECORD 

*'It  is  enough  that  I  have  them,"  he  used  to 
mutter.  In  the  course  of  thirty  years  they 
were  seen  on  his  breast  only  twice — ^at  an 
auspicious  marriage  in  the  family  and  at  the 
funeral  of  an  old  friend.  That  the  wedding 
which  was  thus  honoured  was  not  the  wedding 
of  my  mother  I  learned  only  late  in  life,  too 
late  to  bear  a  grudge  against  Mr.  Nicholas 
B.,  who  made  amends  at  my  birth  by  a  long 
letter  of  congratulation  containing  the  follow- 
ing prophecy:  "He  will  see  better  times." 
Even  in  his  embittered  heart  there  lived  a 
hope.     But  he  was  not  a  true  prophet. 

He  was  a  man  of  strange  contradictions. 
Living  for  many  years  in  his  brother's  house, 
the  home  of  many  children,  a  house  full  of 
life,  of  animation,  noisy  with  a  constant 
coming  and  going  of  many  guests,  he  kept 
his  habits  of  solitude  and  silence.  Consid- 
ered as  obstinately  secretive  in  all  his  pur- 
poses, he  was  in  reality  the  victim  of  a  most 
painful  irresolution  in  all  matters  of  civil  life. 
Under  his  taciturn,  phlegmatic  behaviour 
was  hidden  a  faculty  of  short-lived  passionate 
anger.  I  suspect  he  had  no  talent  for  narra- 
tive; but  it  seemed  to  afford  him  sombre 
satisfaction  to  declare  that  he  was  the  last 

88 


A    PERSONAL    RECORD 

man  to  ride  over  the  bridge  of  the  river 
Elster  after  the  battle  of  Leipsic.  Lest  some 
construction  favourable  to  his  valour  should  be 
put  on  the  fact  he  condescended  to  explain 
how  it  came  to  pass.  It  seems  that  shortly 
after  the  retreat  began  he  was  sent  back  to 
the  town  where  some  divisions  of  the  French 
army  (and  among  them  the  Polish  corps  of 
Prince  Joseph  Poniatowski),  jammed  hope- 
lessly in  the  streets,  were  being  simply  ex- 
terminated by  the  troops  of  the  Allied  Powers. 
When  asked  what  it  was  like  in  there,  Mr. 
Nicholas  B.  muttered  only  the  word  ''Sham- 
bles." Having  delivered  his  message  to  the 
Prince  he  hastened  away  at  once  to  render  an 
account  of  his  mission  to  the  superior  who  had 
sent  him.  By  that  time  the  advance  of  the 
enemy  had  enveloped  the  town,  and  he  was 
shot  at  from  houses  and  chased  all  the  way 
to  the  river-bank  by  a  disorderly  mob  of 
Austrian  Dragoons  and  Prussian  Hussars. 
The  bridge  had  been  mined  early  in  the  morn- 
ing, and  his  opinion  was  that  the  sight  of  the 
horsemen  converging  from  many  sides  in 
the  pursuit  of  his  person  alarmed  the  officer 
in  command  of  the  sappers  and  caused  the 
premature  firing  of  the  charges.     He  had  not 

89 


A    PERSONAL    RECORD 

gone  more  than  two  hundred  yards  on  the 
other  side  when  he  heard  the  sound  of  the 
fatal  explosions.  Mr.  Nicholas  B.  concluded 
his  bald  narrative  with  the  word  "Imbecile," 
uttered  with  the  utmost  deliberation.  It 
testified  to  his  indignation  at  the  loss  of  so 
many  thousands  of  lives.  But  his  phlegmatic 
physiognomy  lighted  up  when  he  spoke  of 
his  only  wound,  with  something  resembling 
satisfaction.  You  will  see  that  there  was 
some  reason  for  it  when  you  learn  that  he 
was  wounded  in  the  heel.  "Like  his  Majesty 
the  Emperor  Napoleon  himself,"  he  reminded 
his  hearers,  with  assumed  indifference.  There 
can  be  no  doubt  that  the  indifference  was 
assumed,  if  one  thinks  what  a  very  distin- 
guished sort  of  wound  it  was.  In  all  the 
history  of  warfare  there  are,  I  believe,  only 
three  warriors  publicly  known  to  have  been 
wounded  in  the  heel — ^Achilles  and  Napoleon 
— demigods  indeed — to  whom  the  familial 
piety  of  an  unworthy  descendant  adds  the 
name  of  the  simple  mortal,  Nicholas  B. 

The  Hundred  Days  found  Mr.  Nicholas  B. 
staying  with  a  distant  relative  of  ours,  owner 
of  a  small  estate  in  Galicia.  How  he  got 
there  across  the  breadth  of  an  armed  Europe, 

90 


A    PERSONAL    RECORD 

and  after  what  adventures,  I  am  afraid  will 
never  be  known  now.  All  his  papers  were 
destroyed  shortly  before  his  death;  but  if 
there  was  among  them,  as  he  affirmed,  a 
concise  record  of  his  life,  then  I  am  pretty 
sure  it  did  not  take  up  more  than  a  half- 
sheet  of  foolscap  or  so.  This  relative  of  ours 
happened  to  be  an  Austrian  officer  who  had 
left  the  service  after  the  battle  of  Austerlitz. 
Unlike  Mr.  Nicholas  B.,  who  concealed  his 
decorations,  he  liked  to  display  his  honourable 
discharge  in  which  he  was  mentioned  as  un- 
schreckbar  (fearless)  before  the  enemy.  No 
conjunction  could  seem  more  unpromising, 
yet  it  stands  in  the  family  tradition  that 
these  two  got  on  very  well  together  in  their 
rural  solitude. 

When  asked  whether  he  had  not  been  sorely 
tempted  during  the  Hundred  Days  to  make 
his  way  again  to  France  and  join  the  service 
of  his  beloved  Emperor,  Mr.  Nicholas  B. 
used  to  mutter:  '*No  money.  No  horse. 
Too  far  to  walk." 

The  fall  of  Napoleon  and  the  ruin  of 
national  hopes  affected  adversely  the  char- 
acter of  Mr.  Nicholas  B.  He  shrank  from 
returning    to    his    province.     But    for    that 

91 


A    PERSONAL    RECORD 

there  was  also  another  reason.  Mr.  Nicholas 
B.  and  his  brother — my  maternal  grand- 
father— had  lost  their  father  early,  while 
they  were  quite  children.  Their  mother, 
young  still  and  left  very  well  off,  married 
again  a  man  of  great  charm  and  of  an  amiable 
disposition,  but  without  a  penny.  He  turned 
out  an  affectionate  and  careful  stepfather; 
it  was  unfortunate,  though,  that  while  direct- 
ing the  boys'  education  and  forming  their 
character  by  wise  counsel,  he  did  his  best 
to  get  hold  of  the  fortune  by  buying  and  sell- 
ing land  in  his  own  name  and  investing  capital 
in  such  a  manner  as  to  cover  up  the  traces 
of  the  real  ownership.  It  seems  that  such 
practices  can  be  successful  if  one  is  charming 
enough  to  dazzle  one's  own  wife  permanently, 
and  brave  enough  to  defy  the  vain  terrors  of 
public  opinion.  The  critical  time  came  when 
the  elder  of  the  boys  on  attaining  his  ma- 
jority, in  the  year  1811,  asked  for  the  accounts 
and  some  part  at  least  of  the  inheritance  to 
begin  life  upon.  It  was  then  that  the  step- 
father declared  with  calm  finality  that  there 
were  no  accounts  to  render  and  no  property 
to  inherit.  The  whole  fortune  was  his  very 
own.     He  was  very  good-natured  about  the 

92 


A    PERSONAL    RECORD 

young  man's  misapprehension  of  the  true 
state  of  affairs,  but,  of  course,  felt  obHged 
to  maintain  his  position  firmly.  Old  friends 
came  and  went  busily,  voluntary  mediators 
appeared  travelling  on  most  horrible  roads 
from  the  most  distant  corners  of  the  three 
provinces;  and  the  Marshal  of  the  Nobility 
{ex-officio  guardian  of  all  well-born  orphans) 
called  a  meeting  of  landowners  to  "ascer- 
tain in  a  friendly  way  how  the  misunder- 
standing between  X  and  his  stepsons  had 
arisen  and  devise  proper  measures  to  remove 
the  same."  A  deputation  to  that  effect 
visited  X,  who  treated  them  to  excellent 
wines,  but  absolutely  refused  his  ear  to  their 
remonstrances.  As  to  the  proposals  for  ar- 
bitration he  simply  laughed  at  them;  yet 
the  whole  province  must  have  been  aware 
that  fourteen  years  before,  when  he  married 
the  widow,  all  his  visible  fortune  consisted 
(apart  from  his  social  qualities)  in  a  smart 
four-horse  turnout  with  two  servants,  with 
whom  he  went  about  visiting  from  house  to 
house;  and  as  to  any  funds  he  might  have 
possessed  at  that  time  their  existence  could 
only  be  inferred  from  the  fact  that  he  was 
very  punctual  in  settling  his  modest  losses 

93 


A    PERSONAL    RECORD 

at  cards.  But  by  the  magic  power  of  stub- 
born and  constant  assertion,  there  were 
found  presently,  here  and  there,  people  who 
mumbled  that  surely  "there  must  be  some- 
thing in  it."  However,  on  his  next  name-day 
(which  he  used  to  celebrate  by  a  great  three 
days'  shooting  party),  of  all  the  invited 
crowd  only  two  guests  turned  up,  distant 
neighbours  of  no  importance;  one  notori- 
ously a  fool,  and  the  other  a  very  pious  and 
honest  person,  but  such  a  passionate  lover 
of  the  gun  that  on  his  own  confession  he 
could  not  have  refused  an  invitation  to  a 
shooting  party  from  the  devil  himself.  X 
met  this  manifestation  of  public  opinion  with 
the  serenity  of  an  unstained  conscience.  He 
refused  to  be  crushed.  Yet  he  must  have 
been  a  man  of  deep  feeling,  because,  when 
his  wife  took  openly  the  part  of  her  children, 
he  lost  his  beautiful  tranquillity,  proclaimed 
himself  heartbroken,  and  drove  her  out  of 
the  house,  neglecting  in  his  grief  to  give  her 
enough  time  to  pack  her  trunks. 

This  was  the  beginning  of  a  lawsuit,  an 
abominable  marvel  of  chicane,  which  by  the 
use  of  every  legal  subterfuge  was  made  to 
last  for  many  years.     It  was  also  the  occasion 

94 


A    PERSONAL    RECORD 

for  a  display  of  much  kindness  and  sympathy. 
All  the  neighbouring  houses  flew  open  for  the 
reception  of  the  homeless.  Neither  legal  aid 
nor  material  assistance  in  the  prosecution 
of  the  suit  was  ever  wanting.  X,  on  his 
side,  went  about  shedding  tears  publicly 
over  his  stepchildren's  ingratitude  and  his 
wife's  blind  infatuation;  but  as  at  the  same 
time  he  displayed  great  cleverness  in  the  art 
of  concealing  material  documents  (he  was 
even  suspected  of  having  burned  a  lot  of  his- 
torically interesting  family  papers)  this  scan- 
dalous litigation  had  to  be  ended  by  a  com- 
promise lest  worse  should  befall.  It  was 
settled  finally  by  a  surrender,  out  of  the  dis- 
puted estate,  in  full  satisfaction  of  all  claims, 
of  two  villages  with  the  names  of  which  I 
do  not  intend  to  trouble  my  readers.  After 
this  lame  and  impotent  conclusion  neither 
the  wife  nor  the  stepsons  had  anything  to 
say  to  the  man  who  had  presented  the  world 
with  such  a  successful  example  of  self-help 
based  on  character,  determination,  and  in- 
dustry ;  and  my  great-grandmother,  her  health 
completely  broken  down,  died  a  couple  of 
years  later  in  Carlsbad.  Legally  secured 
by  a  decree  in  the  possession  of  his  plunder, 

95 


A    PERSONAL    RECORD 

X  regained  his  wonted  serenity,  and  went  on 
living  in  the  neighbourhood  in  a  comfortable 
style  and  in  apparent  peace  of  mind.  His 
big  shoots  were  fairly  well  attended  again. 
He  was  never  tired  of  assuring  people  that 
he  bore  no  grudge  for  what  was  past;  he 
protested  loudly  of  his  constant  affection  for 
his  wife  and  stepchildren.  It  was  true,  he 
said,  that  they  had  tried  to  strip  him  as 
naked  as  a  Turkish  saint  in  the  decline  of 
his  days;  and  because  he  had  defended  him- 
self from  spoliation,  as  anybody  else  in  his 
place  would  have  done,  they  had  abandoned 
him  now  to  the  horrors  of  a  solitary  old  age. 
Nevertheless,  his  love  for  them  survived 
these  cruel  blows.  And  there  might  have 
been  some  truth  in  his  protestations.  Very 
soon  he  began  to  make  overtures  of  friend- 
ship to  his  eldest  stepson,  my  maternal 
grandfather;  and  when  these  were  peremp- 
torily rejected  he  went  on  renewing  them 
again  and  again  with  characteristic  obstinacy. 
For  years  he  persisted  in  his  efforts  at  recon- 
ciliation, promising  my  grandfather  to  exe- 
cute a  will  in  his  favour  if  he  only  would  be 
friends  again  to  the  extent  of  calling  now  and 
then    (it  was  fairly  close  neighbourhood  for 

96 


A    PERSONAL    RECORD 

these  parts,  forty  miles  or  so),  or  even  of 
putting  in  an  appearance  for  the  great  shoot 
on  the  name-day.  My  grandfather  was  an 
ardent  lover  of  every  sport.  His  tempera- 
ment was  as  free  from  hardness  and  ani- 
mosity as  can  be  imagined.  Pupil  of  the 
liberal-minded  Benedictines  who  directed  the 
only  public  school  of  some  standing  then  in 
the  south,  he  had  also  read  deeply  the  authors 
of  the  eighteenth  century.  In  him  Christian 
charity  was  joined  to  a  philosophical  in- 
dulgence for  the  failings  of  human  nature. 
But  the  memory  of  those  miserably  anxious 
early  years,  his  young  man's  years  robbed  of 
all  generous  illusions  by  the  cynicism  of  the 
sordid  lawsuit,  stood  in  the  way  of  forgive- 
ness. He  never  succumbed  to  the  fascina- 
tion of  the  great  shoot;  and  X,  his  heart  set 
to  the  last  on  reconciliation,  with  the  draft 
of  the  will  ready  for  signature  kept  by  his 
bedside,  died  intestate.  The  fortune  thus 
acquired  and  augmented  by  a  wise  and  care- 
ful management  passed  to  some  distant 
relatives  whom  he  had  never  seen  and  who 
even  did  not  bear  his  name. 

Meantime   the    blessing   of   general    peace 
descended  upon  Europe.     Mr.  Nicholas  B», 

97 


A    PERSONAL    RECORD 

bidding  good-bye  to  his  hospitable  relative, 
the  "fearless"  Austrian  officer,  departed  from 
Galicia,  and  without  going  near  his  native 
place,  where  the  odious  lawsuit  was  still 
going  on,  proceeded  straight  to  Warsaw  and 
entered  the  army  of  the  newly  constituted 
Polish  kingdom  under  the  sceptre  of  Alex- 
ander I,  Autocrat  of  all  the  Russias. 

This  kingdom,  created  by  the  Vienna 
Congress  as  an  acknowledgment  to  a  nation 
of  its  former  independent  existence,  included 
only  the  central  provinces  of  the  old  Polish 
patrimony.  A  brother  of  the  Emperor,  the 
Grand  Duke  Constantine  (Pavlovitch),  its 
Viceroy  and  Commander-in-Chief,  married 
morganatically  to  a  Polish  lady  to  whom 
he  was  fiercely  attached,  extended  this  affec- 
tion to  what  he  called  "My  Poles"  in  a 
capricious  and  savage  manner.  Sallow  in 
complexion,  with  a  Tartar  physiognomy  and 
fierce  little  eyes,  he  walked  with  his  fists 
clenched,  his  body  bent  forward,  darting 
suspicious  glances  from  under  an  enormous 
cocked  hat.  His  intelligence  was  limited, 
and  his  sanity  itself  was  doubtful.  The 
hereditary  taint  expressed  itself,  in  his  case, 
not  by  mystic  leanings  as  in  his  two  brothers, 

98 


A    PERSONAL    RECORD 

Alexander  and  Nicholas  (in  their  various 
ways,  for  one  was  mystically  liberal  and  the 
other  mystically  autocratic),  but  by  the  fury 
of  an  uncontrollable  temper  which  generally 
broke  out  in  disgusting  abuse  on  the  parade- 
ground.  He  was  a  passionate  militarist  and 
an  amazing  drill-master.  He  treated  his  Pol- 
lish  army  as  a  spoiled  child  treats  a  favourite 
toy,  except  that  he  did  not  take  it  to  bed 
with  him  at  night.  It  was  not  small  enough 
for  that.  But  he  played  with  it  all  day 
and  every  day,  delighting  in  the  variety  of 
pretty  uniforms  and  in  the  fun  of  incessant 
drilling.  This  childish  passion,  not  for  war, 
but  for  mere  militarism,  achieved  a  desirable 
result.  The  Polish  army,  in  its  equipment, 
in  its  armament,  and  in  its  battle-field  effi- 
ciency, as  then  understood,  became,  by  the 
end  of  the  year  1830,  a  first-rate  tactical 
instrument.  Polish  peasantry  (not  serfs) 
served  in  the  ranks  by  enlistment,  and  the 
officers  belonged  mainly  to  the  smaller  nobil- 
ity. Mr.  Nicholas  B.,  with  his  Napoleonic 
record,  had  no  difficulty  in  obtaining  a  lieu- 
tenancy, but  the  promotion  in  the  Polish 
army  was  slow,  because,  being  a  separate 
organization,  it  took  no  part  in  the  wars  of 

99 


A    PERSONAL    RECORD 

the  Russian  Empire  against  either  Persia  or 
Turkey.  Its  first  campaign,  against  Russia 
itself,  was  to  be  its  last.  In  1831,  on  the  out- 
break of  the  Revolution,  Mr.  Nicholas  B. 
was  the  senior  captain  of  his  regiment.  Some 
time  before  he  had  been  made  head  of  the 
remount  establishment  quartered  outside  the 
kingdom  in  our  southern  provinces,  whence 
almost  all  the  horses  for  the  Polish  cavalry- 
were  drawn.  For  the  first  time  since  he  went 
away  from  home  at  the  age  of  eighteen  to 
begin  his  military  life  by  the  battle  of  Fried- 
land,  Mr.  Nicholas  B.  breathed  the  air  of 
the  "Border,"  his  native  air.  Unkind  fate 
was  lying  in  wait  for  him  among  the  scenes 
of  his  youth.  At  the  first  news  of  the  rising 
in  Warsaw  all  the  remount  establishment, 
officers,  "vets.,"  and  the  very  troopers,  were 
put  promptly  under  arrest  and  hurried  off 
in  a  body  beyond  the  Dnieper  to  the  nearest 
town  in  Russia  proper.  From  there  they 
were  dispersed  to  the  distant  parts  of  the 
^empire.  On  this  occasion  poor  Mr.  Nicholas 
B.  penetrated  into  Russia  much  farther  than 
he  ever  did  in  the  times  of  Napoleonic  in- 
vasion, if  much  less  willingly.  Astrakan  was 
his   destination.     He    remained    there    three 

100 


A    PERSONAL    RECORD 

years,  allowed  to  live  at  large  in  the  town, 
but  having  to  report  himself  every  day  at 
noon  to  the  military  commandant^  .yvhc)  used 
to  detain  him  frequently  for'  a  pipe:  andr  a 
chat.  It  is  difficult  to  form  a  just  ide^  of 
what  a  chat  with  Mr.  Nicholas  B.  could 
have  been  like.  There  must  have  been  much 
compressed  rage  under  his  taciturnity,  for 
the  commandant  communicated  to  him  the 
news  from  the  theatre  of  war,  and  this  news 
was  such  as  it  could  be — that  is,  very  bad  for 
the  Poles.  Mr.  Nicholas  B.  received  these 
communications  with  outward  phlegm,  but 
the  Russian  showed  a  warm  sympathy  for 
his  prisoner.  "As  a  soldier  myself  I  under- 
stand your  feelings.  You,  of  course,  would 
like  to  be  in  the  thick  of  it.  By  heavens! 
I  am  fond  of  you.  If  it  were  not  for  the  terms 
of  the  military  oath  I  would  let  you  go  on 
my  own  responsibility.  What  difference  could 
it  make  to  us,  one  more  or  less  of  you.^^ " 

At  other  times  he  wondered  with  sim- 
plicity. 

"Tell  me,  Nicholas  Stepanovitch "  (my 
great-grandfather's  name  was  Stephen,  and 
the  commandant  used  the  Russian  form  of 
polite  address) — "tell  me  why  is  it  that  you 

101 


A    PERSONAL    RECORD 

Poles  are  always  looking  for  trouble?  What 
else  could  you  expect  from  running  up  against 
Russia?"^ 

.  He  was  capable,  too,  of  philosophical  re- 
flections. 

*'Look  at  your  Napoleon  now.  A  great 
man.  There  is  no  denying  it  that  he  was  a 
great  man  as  long  as  he  was  content  to  thrash 
those  Germans  and  Austrians  and  all  those 
nations.  But  no!  He  must  go  to  Russia 
looking  for  trouble,  and  what's  the  conse- 
quence .^^  Such  as  you  see  me;  I  have  rattled 
this  sabre  of  mine  on  the  pavements  of 
Paris." 

After  his  return  to  Poland  Mr.  Nicholas  B. 
described  him  as  a  "worthy  man  but  stupid," 
whenever  he  could  be  induced  to  speak  of 
the  conditions  of  his  exile.  Declining  the 
option  offered  him  to  enter  the  Russian  army, 
he  was  retirt^d  with  only  half  the  pension  of 
his  rank.  His  nephew  (my  uncle  and  guar- 
dian) told  me  that  the  first  lasting  impression 
on  his  memory  as  a  child  of  four  was  the  glad 
excitement  reigning  in  his  parents'  house  on 
the  day  when  Mr.  Nicholas  B.  arrived  home 
from  his  detention  in  Russia. 

Every  generation  has  its  memories.     The 
102 


A    PERSONAL    RECORD 

first  memories  of  Mr.  Nicholas  B.  might 
have  .been  shaped  by  the  events  of  the  last 
partition  of  Poland,  and  he  lived  long  enough  j  -i 
to  suflFer  from  the  last  armed  rising  in  1863,  1  ] 
an  event  which  affected  the  future  of  all  my 
generation  and  has  coloured  my  earliest  im- 
pressions. His  brother,  in  whose  house  he 
had  sheltered  for  some  seventeen  years  his 
misanthropical  timidity  before  the  common- 
est problems  of  life,  having  died  in  the  early 
fifties,  Mr.  Nicholas  B.  had  to  screw  his  cour- 
age up  to  the  sticking-point  and  come  to 
some  decision  as  to  the  future.  After  a 
long  and  agonizing  hesitation  he  was  per- 
suaded at  last  to  become  the  tenant  of  some 
fifteen  hundred  acres  out  of  the  estate  of  a 
friend  in  the  neighbourhood.  The  terms  of 
the  lease  were  very  advantageous,  but  the 
retired  situation  of  the  village  and  a  plain, 
comfortable  house  in  good  repair  were,  I 
fancy,  the  greatest  inducements.  He  lived 
there  quietly  for  about  ten  years,  seeing  very 
few  people  and  taking  no  part  in  the  public 
life  of  the  province,  such  as  it  could  be  under 
an  arbitrary  bureaucratic  tyranny.  His  char- 
acter and  his  patriotism  were  above  suspicion; 
but  the  organizers  of  the  rising  in  their  fre- 

103 


A    PERSONAL    RECORD 

quent  journeys  up  and  down  the  province 
scrupulously  avoided  coming  near  his  house. 
It  was  generally  felt  that  the  repose  of  the 
old  man's  last  years  ought  not  to  be  dis- 
turbed. Even  such  intimates  as  my  paternal 
grandfather,  comrade-in-arms  during  Napo- 
leon's Moscow  campaign,  and  later  on  a 
fellow  officer  in  the  Polish  army,  refrained 
from  visiting  his  crony  as  the  date  of  the 
outbreak  approached.  My  paternal  grand- 
father's two  sons  and  his  only  daughter  were 
all  deeply  involved  in  the  revolutionary  work; 
he  himself  was  of  that  type  of  Polish  squire 
whose  only  ideal  of  patriotic  action  was  to 
"get  into  the  saddle  and  drive  them  out." 
But  even  he  agreed  that  ''dear  Nicholas 
must  not  be  worried."  All  this  considerate 
caution  on  the  part  of  friends,  both  con- 
spirators and  others,  did  not  prevent  Mr. 
Nicholas  B.  being  made  to  feel  the  mis- 
fortunes of  that  ill-omened  year. 

Less  than  forty-eight  hours  after  the  be- 
ginning of  the  rebellion  in  that  part  of  the 
country,  a  squadron  of  scouting  Cossacks 
passed  through  the  village  and  invaded  the 
homestead.  Most  of  them  remained,  formed 
between   the   house   and   the   stables,   while 

104 


A    PERSONAL    RECORD 

several,  dismounting,  ransacked  the  various 
outbuildings.  The  officer  in  command,  ac- 
companied by  two  men,  walked  up  to  the 
front  door.  All  the  blinds  on  that  side  were 
down.  The  officer  told  the  servant  who 
received  him  that  he  wanted  to  see  his  master. 
He  was  answered  that  the  master  was  away 
from  home,  which  was  perfectly  true. 

I  follow  here  the  tale  as  told  afterward  by 
the  servant  to  my  granduncle's  friends  and 
relatives,  and  as  I  have  heard  it  repeated. 

On  receiving  this  answer  the  Cossack  offi- 
cer, who  had  been  standing  in  the  porch, 
stepped  into  the  house. 

"Where  is  the  master  gone,  then?" 

"Our  master  went  to  J "  (the  govern- 
ment town  some  fifty  miles  oflF)  "the  day 
before  yesterday." 

"There  are  only  two  horses  in  the  stables. 
Where  are  the  others  .f^" 

"Our  master  always  travels  with  his  own 
horses"  (meaning:  not  by  post).  "He  will 
be  away  a  week  or  more.  He  was  pleased 
to  mention  to  me  that  he  had  to  attend  to 
some  business  in  the  Civil  Court." 

While  the  servant  was  speaking  the  officer 
looked   about   the   hall.     There   was   a  door 

105 


A    PERSONAL    RECORD 

facing  him,  a  door  to  the  right,  and  a  door 
to  the  left.  The  officer  chose  to  enter  the 
room  on  the  left,  and  ordered  the  blinds  to 
be  pulled  up.  It  was  Mr.  Nicholas  B.'s 
study,  with  a  couple  of  tall  bookcases,  some 
pictures  on  the  walls,  and  so  on.  Besides 
the  big  centre-table,  with  books  and  papers, 
there  was  a  quite  small  writing-table,  with 
several  drawers,  standing  between  the  door 
and  the  window  in  a  good  light;  and  at  this 
table  my  granduncle  usually  sat  either  to 
read  or  write. 

On  pulling  up  the  blind  the  servant  was 
startled  by  the  discovery  that  the  whole  male 
population  of  the  village  was  massed  in  front, 
trampling  down  the  flower-beds.  There  were 
also  a  few  women  among  them.  He  was 
glad  to  observe  the  village  priest  (of  the 
Orthodox  Church)  coming  up  the  drive.  The 
good  man  in  his  haste  had  tucked  up  his 
cassock  as  high  as  the  top  of  his  boots. 

The  officer  had  been  looking  at  the  backs 
of  the  books  in  the  bookcases.  Then  he 
perched  himself  on  the  edge  of  the  centre- 
table  and  remarked  easily : 

"Your  master  did  not  take  you  to  town 
with  him,  then?" 

106 


A    PERSONAL    RECORD 

"I  am  the  head  servant,  and  he  leaves  me 
in  charge  of  the  house.  It's  a  strong,  young 
chap  that  travels  with  our  master.  If — God 
forbid — there  was  some  accident  on  the  road, 
he  would  be  of  much  more  use  than  I." 

Glancing  through  the  window,  he  saw  the 
priest  arguing  vehemently  in  the  thick  of 
the  crowd,  which  seemed  subdued  by  his 
interference.  Three  or  four  men,  however, 
were  talking  with  the  Cossacks  at  the  door. 

"And  you  don't  think  your  master  has 
gone  to  join  the  rebels  maybe — eh.^^"  asked 
the  officer. 

"Our  master  would  be  too  old  for  that, 
surely.  He's  well  over  seventy,  and  he's 
getting  feeble,  too.  It's  some  years  now 
since  he's  been  on  horseback,  and  he  can't 
walk  much,  either,  now." 

The  officer  sat  there  swinging  his  leg,  very 
quiet  and  indifferent.  By  that  time  the 
peasants  who  had  been  talking  with  the 
Cossack  troopers  at  the  door  had  been  per- 
mitted to  get  into  the  hall.  One  or  two  more 
left  the  crowd  and  followed  them  in.  They 
were  seven  in  all,  and  among  them  the  black- 
smith, an  ex-soldier.  The  servant  appealed 
deferentially  to  the  officer. 

107 


A    PERSONAL    RECORD 

"Won't  your  honour  be  pleased  to  tell  the 
people  to  go  back  to  their  homes?  What  do 
they  want  to  push  themselves  into  the  house 
like  this  for?  It's  not  proper  for  them  to 
behave  like  this  while  our  master's  away 
and  I  am  responsible  for  everything  here." 
The  officer  only  laughed  a  little,  and  after 
a  while  inquired : 

"Have  you  any  arms  in  the  house?" 
"Yes.     We  have.     Some  old  things." 
"Bring  them  all  here,  onto  this  table." 
The  servant  made  another  attempt  to  ob- 
tain protection. 

"  Won't  yourhonour  tell  these  chaps.  .  .  ?" 
But  the  officer  looked  at  him  in  silence, 
in  such  a  way  that  he  gave  it  up  at  once 
and  hurried  off  to  call  the  pantry-boy  to 
help  him  collect  the  arms.  Meantime,  the 
officer  walked  slowly  through  all  the  rooms 
in  the  house,  examining  them  attentively 
but  touching  nothing.  The  peasants  in  the 
hall  fell  back  and  took  off  their  caps  when 
he  passed  through.  He  said  nothing  what- 
ever to  them.  When  he  came  back  to  the 
study  all  the  arms  to  be  found  in  the  house 
were  lying  on  the  table.  There  was  a  pair 
of  big,  ffint-lock  holster  pistols  from  Napo- 

108 


A    PERSONAL    RECORD 

Iconic  times,  two  cavalry  swords,  one  of  the 
French,  the  other  of  the  Pohsh  army  pattern, 
with  a  fowhng-piece  or  two. 

The  officer,  opening  the  window,  flung 
out  pistols,  swords,  and  guns,  one  after  an- 
other, and  his  troopers  ran  to  pick  them  up. 
The  peasants  in  the  hall,  encouraged  by  his 
manner,  had  stolen  after  him  into  the  study. 
He  gave  not  the  slightest  sign  of  being  con- 
scious of  their  existence,  and,  his  business 
being  apparently  concluded,  strode  out  of 
the  house  without  a  word.  Directly  he  left, 
the  peasants  in  the  study  put  on  their  caps 
and  began  to  smile  at  each  other. 

The  Cossacks  rode  away,  passing  through 
the  yards  of  the  home  farm  straight  into 
the  fields.  The  priest,  still  arguing  with  the 
peasants,  moved  gradually  down  the  drive 
and  his  earnest  eloquence  was  drawing  the 
silent  mob  after  him,  away  from  the  house. 
This  justice  must  be  rendered  to  the  parish 
priests  of  the  Greek  Church  that,  strangers 
to  the  country  as  they  were  (being  all  drawn 
from  the  interior  of  Russia),  the  majority 
of  them  used  such  influence  as  they  had  over 
their  flocks  in  the  cause  of  peace  and  hu- 
manity.    True  to  the  spirit  of  their  calling, 

109 


A    PERSONAL    RECORD 

they  tried  to  soothe  the  passions  of  the  ex- 
cited peasantry,  and  opposed  rapine  and 
violence,  whenever  they  could,  with  all  their 
might.  And  this  conduct  they  pursued  against 
the  express  wishes  of  the  authorities.  Later 
on  some  of  them  were  made  to  suffer  for  this 
disobedience  by  being  removed  abruptly  to 
the  far  north  or  sent  away  to  Siberian  par- 
ishes. 

The  servant  was  anxious  to  get  rid  of 
the  few  peasants  who  had  got  into  the  house. 
What  sort  of  conduct  was  that,  he  asked 
them,  toward  a  man  who  was  only  a  tenant, 
had  been  invariably  good  and  considerate 
to  the  villagers  for  years,  and  only  the  other 
day  had  agreed  to  give  up  two  meadows  for 
the  use  of  the  village  herd.^^  He  reminded 
them,  too,  of  Mr.  Nicholas  B.'s  devotion  to 
the  sick  in  time  of  cholera.  Every  word  of 
this  was  true,  and  so  far  effective  that  the 
fellows  began  to  scratch  their  heads  and  look 
irresolute.  The  speaker  then  pointed  at  the 
window,  exclaiming:  "Look!  there's  all  your 
crowd  going  away  quietly,  and  you  silly 
chaps  had  better  go  after  them  and  pray 
God  to  forgive  you  your  evil  thoughts." 

This  appeal  was  an  unlucky  inspiration. 
110 


A    PERSONAL    RECORD 

In  crowding  clumsily  to  the  window  to  see 
whether  he  was  speaking  the  truth,  the  fel- 
lows overturned  the  little  writing-table.  As 
it  fell  over  a  chink  of  loose  coin  was  heard. 
"There's  money  in  that  thing,"  cried  the 
blacksmith.  In  a  moment  the  top  of  the 
delicate  piece  of  furniture  was  smashed  and 
there  lay  exposed  in  a  drawer  eighty  half- 
imperials.  Gold  coin  was  a  rare  sight  in 
Russia  even  at  that  time;  it  put  the  peas- 
ants beside  themselves.  "There  must  be 
more  of  that  in  the  house,  and  we  shall  have 
it,"  yelled  the  ex-soldier  blacksmith.  "This 
is  war-time."  The  others  were  already  shout- 
ing out  of  the  window,  urging  the  crowd 
to  come  back  and  help.  The  priest,  aban- 
doned suddenly  at  the  gate,  flung  his  arms 
up  and  hurried  away  so  as  not  to  see  what 
was  going  to  happen. 

In  their  search  for  money  that  bucolic  mob 
smashed  everything  in  the  house,  ripping 
with  knives,  splitting  with  hatchets,  so  that, 
as  the  servant  said,  there  were  no  two  pieces 
of  wood  holding  together  left  in  the  whole 
house.  They  broke  some  very  fine  mirrors, 
all  the  windows,  and  every  piece  of  glass 
and  china.     They  threw  the  books  and  pa- 

111 


A    PERSONAL    RECORD 

pers  out  on  the  lawn  and  set  fire  to  the  heap 
for  the  mere  fun  of  the  thing,  apparently. 
Absolutely  the  only  one  solitary  thing  which 
they  left  whole  was  a  small  ivory  crucifix, 
which  remained  hanging  on  the  wall  in  the 
wrecked  bedroom  above  a  wild  heap  of  rags, 
broken  mahogany,  and  splintered  boards 
which  had  been  Mr.  Nicholas  B.'s  bedstead. 
Detecting  the  servant  in  the  act  of  stealing 
away  with  a  japanned  tin  box,  they  tore  it 
from  him,  and  because  he  resisted  they  threw 
him  out  of  the  dining-room  window.  The 
house  was  on  one  floor,  but  raised  well  above 
the  ground,  and  the  fall  was  so  serious  that 
the  man  remained  lying  stunned  till  the  cook 
and  a  stable-boy  ventured  forth  at  dusk 
from  their  hiding-places  and  picked  him  up. 
But  by  that  time  the  mob  had  departed, 
carrying  off  the  tin  box,  which  they  sup- 
posed to  be  full  of  paper  money.  Some 
distance  from  the  house,  in  the  middle  of  a 
field,  they  broke  it  open.  They  found  in- 
side documents  engrossed  on  parchment  and 
the  two  crosses  of  the  Legion  of  Honour  and 
For  Valour.  At  the  sight  of  these  objects, 
which,  the  blacksmith  explained,  were  marks 
of  honour  given  only  by  the  Tsar,  they  became 

112 


A    PERSONAL    RECORD 

extremely  frightened  at  what  they  had  done. 
They  threw  the  whole  lot  away  into  a  ditch 
and  dispersed  hastily. 

On  learning  of  this  particular  loss  Mr. 
Nicholas  B.  broke  down  completely.  The 
mere  sacking  of  his  house  did  not  seem  to 
affect  him  much.  While  he  was  still  in  bed 
from  the  shock,  the  two  crosses  were  found 
and  returned  to  him.  It  helped  somewhat 
his  slow  convalescence,  but  the  tin  box  and 
the  parchments,  though  searched  for  in  all 
the  ditches  around,  never  turned  up  again. 
He  could  not  get  over  the  loss  of  his  Legion 
of  Honour  Patent,  whose  preamble,  setting 
forth  his  services,  he  knew  by  heart  to  the 
very  letter,  and  after  this  blow  volunteered 
sometimes  to  recite,  tears  standing  in  his 
eyes  the  while.  Its  terms  haunted  him  ap- 
parently during  the  last  two  years  of  his 
life  to  such  an  extent  that  he  used  to  repeat 
them  to  himself.  This  is  confirmed  by  the 
remark  made  more  than  once  by  his  old 
servant  to  the  more  intimate  friends.  "What 
makes  my  heart  heavy  is  to  hear  our  master 
in  his  room  at  night  walking  up  and  down 
and  praying  aloud  in  the  French  language." 

It  must  have  been  somewhat  over  a  year 
113 


A    PERSONAL    RECORD 

afterward  that  I  saw  Mr.  Nicholas  B. — or, 
more  correctly,  that  he  saw  me — for  the  last 
time.  It  was,  as  I  have  already  said,  at  the 
time  when  my  mother  had  a  three  months' 
leave  from  exile,  which  she  was  spending  in 
the  house  of  her  brother,  and  friends  and  re- 
lations were  coming  from  far  and  near  to 
do  her  honour.  It  is  inconceivable  that  Mr. 
Nicholas  B.  should  not  have  been  of  the  num- 
ber. The  little  child  a  few  months  old  he 
had  taken  up  in  his  arms  on  the  day  of  his 
home-coming,  after  years  of  war  and  exile, 
was  confessing  her  faith  in  national  salva- 
tion by  suffering^£2dle.  in  her  turn.  I  do  not 
know  whether  he  was  present  on  the  very 
day  of  our  departure.  I  have  already  ad- 
mitted that  for  me  he  is  more  especially  the 
man  who  in  his  youth  had  eaten  roast  dog 
in  the  depths  of  a  gloomy  forest  of  snow- 
loaded  pines.  My  memory  cannot  place  him 
in  any  remembered  scene.  A  hooked  nose, 
some  sleek  white  hair,  an  unrelated  evanes- 
cent impression  of  a  meagre,  slight,  rigid 
figure  militarily  buttoned  up  to  the  throat, 
is  all  that  now  exists  on  earth  of  Mr.  Nicholas 
B.;  only  this  vague  shadow  pursued  by  the 
memory   of  his   grandnephew,   the  last   sur- 

114 


A    PERSONAL    RECORD 

viving  human  being,  I  suppose,  of  all  those 
he  had  seen  in  the  course  of  his  taciturn  life. 
But  I  remember  well  the  day  of  our  de- 
parture back  to  exile.  The  elongated,  bi- 
zarre, shabby  travelling-carriage  with  four 
post-horses,  standing  before  the  long  front 
of  the  house  with  its  eight  columns,  four  on 
each  side  of  the  broad  flight  of  stairs.  On 
the  steps,  groups  of  servants,  a  few  relations, 
one  or  two  friends  from  the  nearest  neigh- 
bourhood, a  perfect  silence;  on  all  the  faces 
an  air  of  sober  concentration;  my  grand- 
mother, all  in  black,  gazing  stoically;  my  uncle 
giving  his  arm  to  my  mother  down  to  the 
carriage  in  which  I  had  been  placed  already; 
at  the  top  of  the  flight  my  little  cousin  in  a 
short  skirt  of  a  tartan  pattern  with  a  deal 
of  red  in  it,  and  like  a  small  princess  attended 
by  the  women  of  her  own  household;  the 
head  gouvernante,  our  dear,  corpulent  Fran- 
cesca  (who  had  been  for  thirty  years  in  the 
service  of  the  B.  family),  the  former  nurse, 
now  outdoor  attendant,  a  handsome  peasant 
face  wearing  a  compassionate  expression, 
and  the  good,  ugly  Mile.  Durand,  the  gov- 
erness, with  her  black  eyebrows  meeting  over 
a  short,  thick  nose,  and  a  complexion  like 

115 


A    PERSONAL    RECORD 

pale-brown  paper.  Of  all  the  eyes  turned 
toward  the  carriage,  her  good-natured  eyes 
only  were  dropping  tears,  and  it  was  her 
sobbing  voice  alone  that  broke  the  silence 
with  an  appeal  to  me:  ''N'oublie  pas  ton 
francais,  mon  cherV  In  three  months,  sim- 
ply by  playing  with  us,  she  had  taught  me 
not  only  to  speak  French,  but  to  read  it  as 
well.  She  w^as  indeed  an  excellent  playmate. 
In  the  distance,  half-way  down  to  the  great 
gates,  a  light,  open  trap,  harnessed  with  three 
horses  in  Russian  fashion,  stood  drawn  up  on 
one  side,  with  the  police  captain  of  the  dis- 
trict sitting  in  it,  the  vizor  of  his  flat  cap 
with  a  red  band  pulled  down  over  his  eyes. 

It  seems  strange  that  he  should  have  been 
there  to  watch  our  going  so  carefully.  With- 
out wishing  to  treat  with  levity  the  just 
timidities  of  Imperialists  all  the  world  over, 
I  may  allow  myself  the  reflection  that  a 
woman,  practically  condemned  by  the  doctors, 
and  a  small  boy  not  quite  six  years  old,  could 
not  be  regarded  as  seriously  dangerous,  even 
for  the  largest  of  conceivable  empires  saddled 
with  the  most  sacred  of  responsibilities.  And 
this  good  man  I  believe  did  not  think  so,  either. 

I  learned  afterward  why  he  was  present 
116 


A    PERSONAL    RECORD 

on  that  day.  I  don't  remember  any  outward 
signs;  but  it  seems  that,  about  a  month  before, 
my  mother  became  so  unwell  that  there  was 
a  doubt  whether  she  could  be  made  fit  to 
travel  in  the  time.  In  this  uncertainty  the 
Governor-General  in  Kiev  was  petitioned  to 
grant  her  a  fortnight's  extension  of  stay  in  her 
brother's  house.  No  answer  whatever  was 
returned  to  this  prayer,  but  one  day  at  dusk 
the  police  captain  of  the  district  drove  up  to 
the  house  and  told  my  uncle's  valet,  who 
ran  out  to  meet  him,  that  he  wanted  to  speak 
with  the  master  in  private,  at  once.  Very 
much  impressed  (he  thought  it  was  going  to  be 
an  arrest),  the  servant,  "more  dead  than  ahve 
with  fright,"  as  he  related  afterward,  smuggled 
him  through  the  big  drawing-room,  which  was 
dark  (that  room  was  not  lighted  every  evening) , 
on  tiptoe,  so  as  not  to  attract  the  attention  of 
the  ladies  in  the  house,  and  led  him  by  way  of 
the  orangery  to  my  uncle's  private  apartments. 

The  policeman,  without  any  preliminaries, 
thrust  a  paper  into  my  uncle's  hands. 

"There.  Pray  read  this.  I  have  no  busi- 
ness to  show  this  paper  to  you.  It  is  wrong 
of  me.  But  I  can't  either  eat  or  sleep  with 
such  a  job  hanging  over  me." 

117 


A    PERSONAL    RECORD 

That  police  captain,  a  native  of  Great 
Russia,  had  been  for  many  years  serving  in 
the  district. 

My  uncle  unfolded  and  read  the  document. 
It  was  a  service  order  issued  from  the  Gov- 
ernor-General's secretariat,  dealing  with  the 
matter  of  the  petition  and  directing  the 
police  captain  to  disregard  all  remonstrances 
and  explanations  in  regard  to  that  illness 
either  from  medical  men  or  others,  "and  if 
she  has  not  left  her  brother's  house" — ^it 
went  on  to  say — "on  the  morning  of  the  day 
specified  on  her  permit,  you  are  to  despatch 
her  at  once  under  escort,  direct"  (underlined) 
"to  the  prison-hospital  in  Kiev,  where  she 
will  be  treated  as  her  case  demands." 

"For  God's  sake,  Mr.  B.,  see  that  your 
sister  goes  away  punctually  on  that  day. 
Don't  give  me  this  work  to  do  with  a  woman 
— ^and  with  one  of  your  family,  too.  I  simply 
cannot  bear  to  think  of  it." 

He  was  absolutely  wringing  his  hands. 
My  imcle  looked  at  him  in  silence. 

"Thank  you  for  this  warning.  I  assure 
you  that  even  if  she  were  dying  she  would 
be  carried  out  to  the  carriage." 

"Yes — ^indeed — and  what  difference  would 
118 


A    PERSONAL    RECORD 

it  make — travel  to  Kiev  or  back  to  her  hus- 
band? For  she  would  have  to  go — death  or 
no  death.  And  mind,  Mr.  B.,  I  will  be  here 
on  the  day,  not  that  I  doubt  your  promise, 
but  because  I  must.  I  have  got  to.  Duty. 
All  the  same  my  trade  is  not  fit  for  a  dog 
since  some  of  you  Poles  will  persist  in  re- 
belling, and  all  of  you  have  got  to  suffer  for 
it." 

This  is  the  reason  why  he  was  there  in  an 
open  three-horse  trap  pulled  up  between  the 
house  and  the  great  gates.  I  regret  not  being 
able  to  give  up  his  name  to  the  scorn  of  all 
believers  in  the  rights  of  conquest,  as  a  repre- 
hensibly  sensitive  guardian  of  Imperial  great- 
ness. On  the  other  hand,  I  am  in  a  position 
to  state  the  name  of  the  Governor-General 
who  signed  the  order  with  the  marginal  note 
"to  be  carried  out  to  the  letter"  in  his  own 
handwriting.  The  gentleman's  name  was  Be- 
zak.  A  high  dignitary,  an  energetic  official, 
the  idol  for  a  time  of  the  Russian  patriotic 
press. 

Each  generation  has  its  memories. 


119 


IV 

IT  MUST  not  be  supposed  that,  in  setting 
forth  the  memories  of  this  half -hour  be- 
tween the  moment  my  uncle  left  my 
room  till  we  met  again  at  dinner,  I  am  losing 
sight  of  "  Almayer's  Folly. "  Having  confessed 
that  my  first  novel  was  begun  in  idleness — 
a  holiday  task — I  think  I  have  also  given  the 
impression  that  it  was  a  much-delayed  book. 
It  was  never  dismissed  from  my  mind,  even 
when  the  hope  of  ever  finishing  it  was  very 
faint.  Many  things  came  in  its  way:  daily 
duties,  new  impressions,  old  memories.  It 
was  not  the  outcome  of  a  need — the  fa- 
mous need  of  self-expression  which  artists  find 
in  their  search  for  motives.  The  necessity 
which  impelled  me  was  a  hidden,  obscure 
necessity,  a  completely  masked  and  unaccount- 
able phenomenon.  Or  perhaps  some  idle  and 
frivolous  magician  (there  must  be  magicians 
in  London)  had  cast  a  spell  over  me  through 
his  parlour  window  as  I  explored  the  maze  of 
streets  east  and  west  in  solitary  leisurely  walks 

120 


A    PERSONAL    RECORD 

without  chart  and  compass.  Till  I  began  to 
write  that  novel  I  had  written  nothing  but 
letters,  and  not  very  many  of  these.  I  never 
made  a  note  of  a  fact,  of  an  impression,  or  of  an 
anecdote  in  my  life.  The  conception  of  a 
planned  book  was  entirely  outside  my  mental 
range  when  I  sat  down  to  write;  the  am- 
bition of  being  an  author  had  never  turned 
up  among  those  gracious  imaginary  exist- 
ences one  creates  fondly  for  oneself  at  times  in 
the  stillness  and  immobility  of  a  day-dream: 
yet  it  stands  clear  as  the  sun  at  noonday  that 
from  the  moment  I  had  done  blackening 
over  the  first  manuscript  page  of  ''Almayer's 
Folly  "  (it  contained  about  two  hundred  words 
and  this  proportion  of  words  to  a  page  has 
remained  with  me  through  the  fifteen  years 
of  my  writing  life),  from  the  moment  I  had,  in 
the  simplicity  of  my  heart  and  the  amazing 
ignorance  of  my  mind,  written  that  page  the 
die  was  cast.  Never  had  Rubicon  been  more 
blindly  forded  without  invocation  to  the  gods, 
without  fear  of  men. 

That  morning  I  got  up  from  my  breakfast, 
pushing  the  chair  back,  and  rang  the  bell 
violently,  or  perhaps  I  should  say  resolutely, 
or  perhaps  I  should  say  eagerly — I  do  not 

121 


A    PERSONAL    RECORD 

know.  But  manifestly  it  must  have  been 
a  special  ring  of  the  bell,  a  common  sound 
made  impressive,  like  the  ringing  of  a  bell 
for  the  raising  of  the  curtain  upon  a  new 
scene.  It  was  an  unusual  thing  for  me  to 
do.  Generally,  I  dawdled  over  my  breakfast 
and  I  seldom  took  the  trouble  to  ring  the 
bell  for  the  table  to  be  cleared  away;  but 
on  that  morning,  for  some  reason  hidden  in 
the  general  mysteriousness  of  the  event,  I 
did  not  dawdle.  And  yet  I  was  not  in  a  hurry. 
I  pulled  the  cord  casually,  and  while  the  faint 
tinkling  somewhere  down  in  the  basement 
went  on,  I  charged  my  pipe  in  the  usual  way 
and  I  looked  for  the  match-box  with  glances 
distraught  indeed,  but  exhibiting,  I  am  ready 
to  swear,  no  signs  of  a  fine  frenzy.  I  was 
composed  enough  to  perceive  after  some 
considerable  time  the  match-box  lying  there 
on  the  mantelpiece  right  under  my  nose. 
And  all  this  was  beautifully  and  safely  usual. 
Before  I  had  thrown  down  the  match  my 
landlady's  daughter  appeared  with  her  calm, 
pale  face  and  an  inquisitive  look,  in  the  door- 
way. Of  late  it  was  the  landlady's  daughter 
who  answered  my  bell.  I  mention  this  little 
fact  with  pride,  because  it  proves  that  during 

122 


A    PERSONAL    RECORD 

the  thirty  or  forty  days  of  my  tenancy  I  had 
produced  a  favourable  impression.  For  a  fort- 
night past  I  had  been  spared  the  unattractive 
sight  of  the  domestic  slave.  The  girls  in 
that  Bessborough  Gardens  house  were  often 
changed,  but  whether  short  or  long,  fair  or 
dark,  they  were  always  untidy  and  par- 
ticularly bedraggled,  as  if  in  a  sordid  version 
of  the  fairy  tale  the  ash-bin  cat  had  been 
changed  into  a  maid.  I  was  infinitely  sen- 
sible of  the  privilege  of  being  waited  on  by 
my  landlady's  daughter.  She  was  neat  if 
anemic. 

"Will  you  please  clear  away  all  this  at 
once?"  I  addressed  her  in  convulsive  ac- 
cents, being  at  the  same  time  engaged  in 
getting  my  pipe  to  draw.  This,  I  admit, 
was  an  unusual  request.  Generally,  on  get- 
ting up  from  breakfast  I  would  sit  down  in  the 
window  with  a  book  and  let  them  clear  the 
table  when  they  liked;  but  if  you  think 
that  on  that  morning  I  was  in  the  least  im- 
patient, you  are  mistaken.  I  remember  that 
I  was  perfectly  calm.  As  a  matter  of  fact 
I  was  not  at  all  certain  that  I  wanted  to 
write,  or  that  I  meant  to  write,  or  that  I 
had  anything  to  write  about.     No,  I  was  not 

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impatient.  I  lounged  between  the  mantel- 
piece and  the  window,  not  even  consciously 
waiting  for  the  table  to  be  cleared.  It  was 
ten  to  one  that  before  my  landlady's  daughter 
was  done  I  would  pick  up  a  book  and  sit 
down  with  it  all  the  morning  in  a  spirit  of 
enjoyable  indolence.  I  affirm  it  with  assur- 
ance, and  I  don't  even  know  now  what  were 
the  books  then  lying  about  the  room.  What- 
ever they  were,  they  were  not  the  works  of 
great  masters,  where  the  secret  of  clear 
thought  and  exact  expression  can  be  found. 
Since  the  age  of  five  I  have  been  a  great 
reader,  as  is  not  perhaps  wonderful  in  a  child 
who  was  never  aware  of  learning  to  read. 
At  ten  years  of  age  I  had  read  much  of  Victor 
Hugo  and  other  romantics.  I  had  read  in  Po- 
lish and  in  French,  history,  voyages,  novels;  I 
knew  "Gil  Bias"  and  "Don  Quixote"  in  abridged 
editions;  I  had  read  in  early  boyhood  Polish^ 
poets  and  some  French  poets,  but  I  cannot  say 
what  I  read  on  the  evening  before  I  began  to 
write  myself.  I  believe  it  was  a  novel,  and  it 
is  quite  possible  that  it  was  one  of  Anthony 
TroUope's  novels.  It  is  very  likely.  My  ac- 
quaintance with  him  was  then  very  recent. 
He   is   one   of   the   English   novelists   whose 

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A    PERSONAL    RECORD 

works  I  read  for  the  first  time  in  English. 
With  men  of  European  reputation,  with 
Dickens  and  Walter  Scott  and  Thackeray, 
it  was  otherwise.  My  first  introduction  to 
English  imaginative  literature  was  "Nicholas 
Nickleby."  It  is  extraordinary  how  well  Mrs. 
Nickleby  could  chatter  disconnectedly  in  Po- 
lish and  the  sinister  Ralph  rage  in  that 
language.  As  to  the  Crummies  family  and 
the  family  of  the  learned  S  queers  it  seemed  as 
natural  to  them  as  their  native  speech.  It 
was,  I  have  no  doubt,  an  excellent  translation. 
This  must  have  been  in  the  year  '70.  But 
I  really  believe  that  I  am  wrong.  That 
book  was  not  my  first  introduction  to  Eng- 
lish literature.  My  first  acquaintance  was  (or 
were)  the  "Two  Gentlemen  of  Verona,"  and 
that  in  the  very  MS.  of  my  father's  transla- 
tion. It  was  during  our  exile  in  Russia,  and  it 
must  have  been  less  than  a  year  after  my 
mother's  death,  because  I  remember  myself  in 
the  black  blouse  with  a  white  border  of  my 
heavy  mourning.  We  were  living  together, 
quite  alone,  in  a  small  house  on  the  outskirts 
of  the  town  of  T .  That  afternoon,  in- 
stead of  going  out  to  play  in  the  large  yard 
which  we  shared  with  our  landlord,  I  had 

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lingered  in  the  room  in  which  my  father 
generally  wrote.  Wliat  emboldened  me  to 
clamber  into  his  chair  I  am  sure  I  don't 
know,  but  a  couple  of  hours  afterward  he 
discovered  me  kneeling  in  it  with  my  elbows 
on  the  table  and  my  head  held  in  both  hands 
over  the  MS.  of  loose  pages.  I  was  greatly 
confused,  expecting  to  get  into  trouble.  He 
stood  in  the  doorway  looking  at  me  with 
some  surprise,  but  the  only  thing  he  said  after 
a  moment  of  silence  was : 

"Read  the  page  aloud." 

Luckily  the  page  lying  before  me  was  not 
overblotted  with  erasures  and  corrections,  and 
my  father's  handwriting  was  otherwise  ex- 
tremely legible.  When  I  got  to  the  end 
he  nodded,  and  I  flew  out-of-doors,  thinking 
myself  lucky  to  have  escaped  reproof  for 
that  piece  of  impulsive  audacity.  I  have 
tried  to  discover  since  the  reason  for  this 
mildness,  and  I  imagine  that  all  unknown 
to  myseK  I  had  earned,  in  my  father's  mind, 
the  right  to  some  latitude  in  my  relations 
with  his  writing-table.  It  was  only  a  month 
before — or  perhaps  it  was  only  a  week  before 
— that  I  had  read  to  him  aloud  from  beginning 
to  end,  and  to  his  perfect  satisfaction,  as  he 

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lay  on  his  bed,  not  being  very  well  at  the 
time,  the  proofs  of  his  translation  of  Victor 
Hugo's  ''Toilers  of  the  Sea."  Such  was  my 
title  to  consideration,  I  believe,  and  also  my 
first  introduction  to  the  sea  in  literature.  If  1 
do  not  remember  where,  how,  and  when  I 
learned  to  read,  I  am  not  likely  to  forget 
the  process  of  being  trained  in  the  art  of 
reading  aloud.  My  poor  father,  an  admirable 
reader  himself,  was  the  most  exacting  of 
masters.  I  reflect  proudly  that  I  must  have 
read  that  page  of  "Two  Gentlemen  of  Verona" 
tolerably  well  at  the  age  of  eight.  The  next 
time  I  met  them  was  in  a  5s.  one-volume 
edition  of  the  dramatic  works  of  William 
Shakespeare,  read  in  Falmouth,  at  odd  mo- 
ments of  the  day,  to  the  noisy  accompaniment 
of  calkers'  mallets  driving  oakum  into  the 
deck-seams  of  a  ship  in  dry-dock.  We  had 
run  in,  in  a  sinking  condition  and  with  the 
crew  refusing  duty  after  a  month  of  weary 
battling  with  the  gales  of  the  North  Atlantic. 
Books  are  an  integral  part  of  one's  life,  and 
my  Shakespearian  associations  are  with  that 
first  year  of  our  bereavement,  the  last  I  spent 
with  my  father  in  exile  (he  sent  me  away 
to  Poland  to  my  mother's  brother  directly 

127 


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he  could  brace  himself  up  for  the  separation), 
and  with  the  year  of  hard  gales,  the  year  in 
which  I  came  nearest  to  death  at  sea,  first 
by  water  and  then  by  fire. 

Those  things  I  remember,  but  what  I  was 
reading  the  day  before  my  writing  life  began 
I  have  forgotten;  I  have  only  a  vague  notion 
that  it  might  have  been  one  of  TroUope's 
political  novels.  And  I  remember,  too,  the 
character  of  the  day.  It  was  an  autumn  day 
with  an  opaline  atmosphere,  a  veiled,  semi- 
opaque,  lustrous  day,  with  fiery  points  and 
flashes  of  red  sunlight  on  the  roofs  and  win- 
dows opposite,  while  the  trees  of  the  square, 
with  all  their  leaves  gone,  were  like  the  trac- 
ings of  India  ink  on  a  sheet  of  tissue-paper. 
It  was  one  of  those  London  days  that  have  the 
charm  of  mysterious  amenity,  of  fascinating 
softness.  The  effect  of  opaline  mist  was  often 
repeated  at  Bessborough  Gardens  on  account 
of  the  nearness  to  the  river. 

There  is  no  reason  why  I  should  remember 
that  effect  more  on  that  day  than  on  any 
other  day,  except  that  I  stood  for  a  long  time 
looking  out  of  the  window  after  the  land- 
lady's daughter  was  gone  with  her  spoil  of 
cups  and  saucers.     I  heard  her  put  the  tray 

US 


A    PERSONAL    RECORD 

down  in  the  passage  and  finally  shut  the  door; 
and  still  I  remained  smoking,  with  my  back 
to  the  room.  It  is  very  clear  that  I  was  in 
no  haste  to  take  the  plunge  into  my  writing 
life,  if  as  plunge  this  first  attempt  may  be 
described.  My  whole  being  was  steeped  deep 
in  the  indolence  of  a  sailor  away  from  the  sea, 
the  scene  of  never-ending  labour  and  of  un- 
ceasing duty.  For  utter  surrender  to  in- 
dolence you  cannot  beat  a  sailor  ashore  when 
that  mood  is  on  him — the  mood  of  absolute 
irresponsibility  tasted  to  the  full.  It  seems 
to  me  that  I  thought  of  nothing  whatever, 
but  this  is  an  impression  which  is  hardly  to 
be  believed  at  this  distance  of  years.  Wliat 
I  am  certain  of  is  that  I  was  very  far  from 
thinking  of  writing  a  story,  though  it  is  pos- 
sible and  even  likely  that  I  was  thinking,  of 
the  man  Almayer. 

I  had  seen  hina  for  the  first  time,  some  four 
years  before,  from  the  bridge  of  a  steamer 
moored  to  a  rickety  little  wharf  forty  miles  up, 
more  or  less,  a  Bornean  river.  It  was  very 
early  morning,  and  a  slight  mist — an  opaline 
mist  as  in  Bessborough  Gardens,  only  without 
the  fiery  flicks  on  roof  and  chimney-pot  from 
the  rays  of  the  red  London  sun — promised  to 

129 


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turn  presently  into  a  woolly  fog.  Barring  a 
small  dug-out  canoe  on  the  river  there  was 
nothing  moving  within  sight.  I  had  just 
come  up  yawning  from  my  cabin.  The  serang 
and  the  Malay  crew  were  overhauling  the 
cargo  chains  and  trying  the  winches;  their 
voices  sounded  subdued  on  the  deck  below, 
and  their  movements  were  languid.  That 
tropical  daybreak  was  chilly.  The  Malay 
quartermaster,  coming  up  to  get  something 
from  the  lockers  on  the  bridge,  shivered 
visibly.  The  forests  above  and  below  and 
on  the  opposite  bank  looked  black  and  dank; 
wet  dripped  from  the  rigging  upon  the  tightly 
stretched  deck  awnings,  and  it  was  in  the 
middle  of  a  shuddering  yawn  that  I  caught 
sight  of  Almayer.  He  was  moving  across  a 
patch  of  burned  grass,  a  blurred,  shadoTvy 
shape  with  the  blurred  bulk  of  a  house  behind 
him,  a  low  house  of  mats,  bamboos,  and  palm- 
leaves,  with  a  high-pitched  roof  of  grass. 

He  stepped  upon  the  jetty.  He  was  clad 
simply  in  flapping  pajamas  of  cretonne  pat- 
tern (enormous  flowers  with  yellow  petals  on 
a  disagreeable  blue  ground)  and  a  thin  cotton 
singlet  with  short  sleeves.  His  arms,  bare 
to  the  elbow,  were  crossed  on  his  chest.     His 

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A    PERSONAL    RECORD 

black  hair  looked  as  if  it  had  not  been  cut 
for  a  very  long  time,  and  a  curly  wisp  of  it 
strayed  across  his  forehead.  I  had  heard  of 
him  at  Singapore;  I  had  heard  of  him  on 
board;  I  had  heard  of  him  early  in  the  morn- 
ing and  late  at  night;  I  had  heard  of  him  at 
tiffin  and  at  dinner;  I  had  heard  of  him  in  a 
place  called  Pulo  Laut  from  a  half-caste 
gentleman  there,  who  described  himself  as  \ 
the  manager  of  a  coal-mine;  which  sounded 
civilized  and  progressive  till  you  heard  that 
the  mine  could  not  be  worked  at  present 
because  it  was  haunted  by  some  particularlyj 
atrocious  ghosts.  I  had  heard  of  him  in  a 
place  called  Dongola,  in  the  Island  of  Celebes, 
when  the  Rajah  of  that  little-known  seaport 
(you  can  get  no  anchorage  there  in  less  than 
fifteen  fathom,  which  is  extremely  incon- 
venient) came  on  board  in  a  friendly  way, 
with  only  two  attendants,  and  drank  bottle 
after  bottle  of  soda-water  on  the  after-sky- 
light with  my  good  friend  and  commander, 

Captain  C .     At  least  I  heard  his  name 

distinctly  pronounced  several  times  in  a  lot 
of  talk  in  Malay  language.  Oh,  yes,  I  heard  it 
quite  distinctly — ^Almayer,  Almayer — and  saw 

Captain   C smile,   while    the  fat,   dingy 

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A    PERSONAL    RECORD 

Rajah  laughed  audibly.  To  hear  a  Malay  Ra* 
jah  laugh  outright  is  a  rare  experience,  I  can  as- 
sure you.  And  I  overheard  more  of  Almay- 
er's  name  among  our  deck  passengers  (mostly 
wandering  traders  of  good  repute)  as  they  sat 
all  over  the  ship — each  man  fenced  round  with 
bundles  and  boxes — on  mats,  on  pillows,  on 
quilts,  on  billets  of  wood,  conversing  of  Island 
affairs.  Upon  my  word,  I  heard  the  mutter 
of  Almayer's  name  faintly  at  midnight,  while 
making  my  way  aft  from  the  bridge  to  look 
at  the  patent  taffrail-log  tinkling  its  quarter- 
miles  in  the  great  silence  of  the  sea.  I  don't 
mean  to  say  that  our  passengers  dreamed 
aloud  of  Almayer,  but  it  is  indubitable  that 
two  of  them  at  least,  who  could  not  sleep, 
apparently,  and  were  trying  to  charm  away 
the  trouble  of  insomnia  by  a  little  whispered 
talk  at  that  ghostly  hour,  were  referring  in 
some  way  or  other  to  Almayer.  It  was 
really  impossible  on  board  that  ship  to  get 
away  definitely  from  Almayer;  and  a  very 
rSmall  pony  tied  up  forward  and  whisking  its 
tail  inside  the  galley,  to  the  great  embarrass- 
ment of  our  Chinaman  cook,  was  destined  for 
Almayer.  \Miat  he  wanted  with  a  pony 
goodness  only  knows,   since  I  am  perfectly 

132 


A    PERSONAL    RECORD 

certain  he  could  not  ride  it;  but  here  you 
have  the  man,  ambitious,  aiming  at  the 
grandiose,  importing  a  pony,  whereas  in  the 
whole  settlement  at  which  he  used  to  shake 
daily  his  impotent  fist  there  was  only  one 
path  that  was  practicable  for  a  pony:  a 
quarter  of  a  mile  at  most,  hedged  in  by  hun- 
dreds of  square  leagues  of  virgin  forest. 
But  who  knows?  The  importation  of  that 
Bali  pony  might  have  been  part  of  some  deep 
scheme,  of  some  diplomatic  plan,  of  some 
hopeful  intrigue.  With  Almayer  one  could 
never  tell.  He  governed  his  conduct  by  con- 
siderations removed  from  the  obvious,  by 
incredible  assumptions,  which  rendered  his 
logic  impenetrable  to  any  reasonable  person. 
I  learned  all  this  later.  That  morning,  seeing 
the  figure  in  pajamas  moving  in  the  mist,  I 
said  to  myself,  "That's  the  man." 

He  came  quite  close  to  the  ship's  side  and 
raised  a  harassed  countenance,  round  and 
flat,  with  that  curl  of  black  hair  over  the 
forehead  and  a  heavy,  pained  glance. 

"Good  morning." 

"Good  morning." 

He  looked  hard  at  me:  I  was  a  new  face, 
having  just  replaced  the  chief  mate  he  was 

133 


A    PERSONAL    RECORD 

accustomed  to  see;  and  I  think  that  this 
novelty  inspired  him,  as  things  generally  did, 
with  deep-seated  mistrust. 

"Didn't  expect  you  till  this  evening,"  he 
remarked,  suspiciously. 

I  didn't  know  why  he  should  have  been 
aggrieved,  but  he  seemed  to  be.  I  took 
pains  to  explain  to  him  that,  having  picked 
up  the  beacon  at  the  mouth  of  the  river  just 
before  dark  and   the   tide   serving.   Captain 

C was  enabled  to  cross  the  bar  and  there 

was  nothing  to  prevent  him  going  up  the 
river  at  night. 

"Captain  C knows  this  river  like  his 

own  pocket,"  I  concluded,  discursively,  try- 
ing to  get  on  terms. 

"Better,"  said  Almayer. 

Leaning  over  the  rail  of  the  bridge,  I  looked 
at  Almayer,  who  looked  down  at  the  wharf 
in  aggrieved  thought.  He  shuffled  his  feet  a 
little;  he  wore  straw  slippers  with  thick 
soles.  The  morning  fog  had  thickened  con- 
siderably. Everything  round  us  dripped — the 
derricks,  the  rails,  every  single  rope  in  the 
ship — as  if  a  fit  of  crying  had  come  upon  the 
universe. 

Almayer  again  raised  his  head  and,  in  the 
134 


A    PERSONAL    RECORD 

accents  of  a  man  accustomed  to  the  buffets 
of  evil  fortune,  asked,  hardly  audibly: 

"I  suppose  you  haven't  got  such  a  thing  as 
a  pony  on  board?" 

I  told  him,  almost  in  a  whisper,  for  he 
attuned  my  communications  to  his  minor  key, 
that  we  had  such  a  thing  as  a  pony,  and  I 
hinted,  as  gently  as  I  could,  that  he  was 
confoundedly  in  the  way,  too.  I  was  very 
anxious  to  have  him  landed  before  I  began  to 
handle  the  cargo.  Almayer  remained  looking 
up  at  me  for  a  long  while,  with  incredulous 
and  melancholy  eyes,  as  though  it  were  not 
a  safe  thing  to  believe  in  my  statement.  This 
pathetic  mistrust  in  the  favourable  issue  of 
any  sort  of  affair  touched  me  deeply,  and  I 
added : 

"He  doesn't  seem  a  bit  the  worse  for  the 
passage.     He's  a  nice  pony,  too." 

Almayer  was  not  to  be  cheered  up;  for 
all  answer  he  cleared  his  throat  and  looked 
down  again  at  his  feet.  I  tried  to  close  with 
him  on  another  tack. 

"By  Jove!"  I  said.  "Aren't  you  afraid  of 
catching  pneumonia  or  bronchitis  or  some- 
thing, walking  about  in  a  singlet  in  such  a 
wetfog.^" 

135 


A    PERSONAL    RECORD 

He  was  not  to  be  propitiated  by  a  show  of 
interest  in  his  health.  His  answer  was  a 
sinister  "No  fear,"  as  much  as  to  say  that 
even  that  way  of  escape  from  inclement  for- 
tune was  closed  to  him. 

"I  just  came  down  .  .  ."  he  mumbled, 
after  a  while. 

"Well,  then,  now  you're  here  I  will  land 
that  pony  for  you  at  once,  and  you  can  lead 
him  home.  I  really  don't  want  him  on  deck. 
He's  in  the  way." 

Almayer  seemed  doubtful.     I  insisted : 

*'Why,  I  will  just  swing  him  out  and  land 
him  on  the  wharf  right  in  front  of  you.  I'd 
much  rather  do  it  before  the  hatches  are  off. 
The  little  devil  may  jump  down  the  hold  or 
do  some  other  deadly  thing." 

"There's  a  halter.^"  postulated  Almayer. 

"Yes,  of  course  there's  a  halter."  And 
without  waiting  any  more  I  leaned  over  the 
bridge  rail. 

"  Serang,  land  Tuan  Almayer's  pony." 

The  cook  hastened  to  shut  the  door  of  the 
galley,  and  a  moment  later  a  great  scuffle 
began  on  deck.  The  pony  kicked  with  ex- 
treme energy,  the  kalashes  skipped  out  of  the 
way,   the   serang   issued   many   orders   in   a 

136 


A    PERSONAL    RECORD 

cracked  voice.  Suddenly  the  pony  leaped 
upon  the  fore-hatch.  His  little  hoofs  thun- 
dered tremendously;  he  plunged  and  reared. 
He  had  tossed  his  mane  and  his  forelock  into  a 
state  of  amazing  wildness,  he  dilated  his  nos- 
trils, bits  of  foam  flecked  his  broad  little  chest, 
his  eyes  blazed.  He  was  something  under 
eleven  hands;  he  was  fierce,  terrible,  angry, 
warlike ;  he  said  ha !  ha !  distinctly ;  he  raged  and 
thumped — and  sixteen  able-bodied  kalashes 
stood  round  him  like  disconcerted  nurses 
round  a  spoiled  and  passionate  child.  He 
whisked  his  tail  incessantly;  he  arched  his 
pretty  neck;  he  was  perfectly  delightful; 
he  was  charmingly  naughty.  There  was  not 
an  atom  of  vice  in  that  performance;  no 
savage  baring  of  teeth  and  laying  back  of 
ears.  On  the  contrary,  he  pricked  them  for- 
ward in  a  comically  aggressive  manner.  He 
was  totally  unmoral  and  lovable;  I  would 
have  liked  to  give  him  bread,  sugar,  carrots. 
But  life  is  a  stern  thing  and  the  sense  of  duty 
the  only  safe  guide.  So  I  steeled  my  heart, 
and  from  my  elevated  position  on  the  bridge 
I  ordered  the  men  to  fling  themselves  upon 
him  in  a  body. 

The  elderly  serang,  emitting  a  strange,  in- 
137 


A    PERSONAL    RECORD 

articulate  cry,  gave  the  example.  He  was  an 
excellent  petty  oflScer — very  competent,  in- 
deed, and  a  moderate  opium-smoker.  The 
rest  of  them  in  one  great  rush  smothered  that 
pony.  They  hung  on  to  his  ears,  to  his  mane, 
to  his  tail;  they  lay  in  piles  across  his  back, 
seventeen  in  all.  The  carpenter,  seizing  the 
hook  of  the  cargo-chain,  flung  himself  on  the 
top  of  them.  A  very  satisfactory  petty  officer, 
too,  but  he  stuttered.  Have  you  ever  heard 
a  light-yellow,  lean,  sad,  earnest  Chinaman 
stutter  in  Pidgin-English  .^^  It's  very  weird, 
indeed.  He  made  the  eighteenth.  I  could 
not  see  the  pony  at  all;  but  from  the  swaying 
and  heaving  of  that  heap  of  men  I  knew 
that  there  was  something  alive  inside. 

From  the  wharf  Almayer  hailed,  in  quaver- 
ing tones: 

"Oh,  I  say!" 

Where  he  stood  he  could  not  see  what 
was  going  on  on  deck,  unless,  perhaps,  the 
tops  of  the  men's  heads;  he  could  only  hear 
the  scuffle,  the  mighty  thuds,  as  if  the  ship 
were  being  knocked  to  pieces.  I  looked  over: 
"What  is  it.?^" 

"Don't  let  them  break  his  legs,"  he  en- 
treated me,  plaintively. 

13S 


A    PERSONAL    RECORD 

"Oh,  nonsense!  He's  all  right  now.  He 
can't  move." 

By  that  time  the  cargo-chain  had  been 
hooked  to  the  broad  canvas  belt  round  the 
pony's  body;  the  kalashes  sprang  off  simul- 
taneously in  all  directions,  rolling  over  each 
other;  and  the  worthy  serang,  making  a  dash 
behind  the  winch,  turned  the  steam  on. 

"Steady!"  I  yelled,  in  great  apprehension  of 
seeing  the  animal  snatched  up  to  the  very 
head  of  the  derrick. 

On  the  wharf  Almayer  shuffled  his  straw 
slippers  uneasily.  The  rattle  of  the  winch 
stopped,  and  in  a  tense,  impressive  silence 
that  pony  began  to  swing  across  the  deck 

How  limp  he  was!  Directly  he  felt  himself 
in  the  air  he  relaxed  every  muscle  in  a  most 
wonderful  manner.  His  four  hoofs  knocked 
together  in  a  bunch,  his  head  hung  down,  and 
his  tail  remained  pendent  in  a  nerveless  and 
absolute  immobility.  He  reminded  me  vividly 
of  the  pathetic  little  sheep  which  hangs  on 
the  collar  of  the  Order  of  the  Golden  Fleece. 
I  had  no  idea  that  anything  in  the  shape  of 
a  horse  could  be  so  limp  as  that,  either  living 
or  dead.  His  wild  mane  hung  down  lumpily, 
a  mere  mass  of  inanimate  horsehair;  his  ag- 

139 


A    PERSONAL    RECORD 

gressive  ears  had  collapsed,  but  as  he  went 
swaying  slowly  across  the  front  of  the  bridge 
I  noticed  an  astute  gleam  in  his  dreamy,  half- 
closed  eye.  A  trustworthy  quartermaster, 
his  glance  anxious  and  his  mouth  on  the 
broad  grin,  was  easing  over  the  derrick 
watchfully.  I  superintended,  greatly  inter- 
ested. 

"So!    That  will  do." 

The  derrick-head  stopped.  The  kalashes 
lined  the  rail.  The  rope  of  the  halter  hung 
perpendicular  and  motionless  like  a  bell-pull 
in  front  of  Almayer.  Everything  was  very 
still.  I  suggested  amicably  that  he  should 
catch  hold  of  the  rope  and  mind  what  he  was 
about.  He^extended  a  provokingly  casual  and 
superior  hand. 

"  Look  out,  then !     Lower  away ! " 

Almayer  gathered  in  the  rope  intelligently 
enough,  but  when  the  pony's  hoofs  touched 
the  wharf  he  gave  way  all  at  once  to  a  most 
foolish  optimism.  Without  pausing,  with- 
out thinking,  almost  without  looking,  he  dis- 
engaged the  hook  suddenly  from  the  sling, 
and  the  cargo-chain,  after  hitting  the  pony's 
quarters,  swung  back  against  the  ship's  side 
with  a  noisy,  rattling  slap.     I  suppose  I  must 

140 


A    PERSONAL    RECORD 

have  blinked.  I  know  I  missed  something,  be- 
cause the  next  thing  I  saw  was  Almayer  lying 
flat  on  his  back  on  the  jetty.     He  was  alone. 

Astonishment  deprived  me  of  speech  long 
enough  to  give  Almayer  time  to  pick  himself 
up  in  a  leisurely  and  painful  manner.  The 
kalashes  lining  the  rail  all  had  their  mouths 
open.  The  mist  flew  in  the  light  breeze,  and 
it  had  come  over  quite  thick  enough  to  hide 
the  shore  completely. 

"How  on  earth  did  you  manage  to  let  him 
get  away.^"  I  asked,  scandalized. 

Almayer  looked  into  the  smarting  palm  of 
his  right  hand,  but  did  not  answer  my  in- 
quiry. 

"Where  do  you  think  he  will  get  to.^^"  I 
cried.  "Are  there  any  fences  anywhere  in 
this  fog?  Can  he  bolt  into  the  forest .^^ 
What's  to  be  done  now.^^" 

Almayer  shrugged  his  shoulders. 

"Some  of  my  men  are  sure  to  be  about. 
They  will  get  hold  of  him  sooner  or  later." 

"Sooner  or  later!  That's  all  very  fine, 
but  what  about  my  canvas  sling? — ^he's  car- 
ried it  off.  I  want  it  now,  at  once,  to  land  two 
Celebes  cows." 

Since  Dongola  we  had  on  board  a  pair 
141 


A    PERSONAL    RECORD 

of  the  pretty  little  island  cattle  in  addition 
to  the  pony.  Tied  up  on  the  other  side  of 
the  fore-deck  they  had  been  whisking  their 
tails  into  the  other  door  of  the  galley.  These 
cows  were  not  for  Almayer,  however;  they 
.  /  were  invoiced  to  Abdullak^_biiU  Sehm,  his 
enemy.  Almayer's  disregard  of  my  require- 
ments was  complete. 

"If  I  were  you  I  would  try  to  find  out 
where  he's  gone,"  I  insisted.  "Hadn't  you 
better  call  your  men  together  or  something? 
He  will  throw  himself  down  and  cut  his  knees. 
He  may  even  break  a  leg,  you  know." 

But  Almayer,  plunged  in  abstracted  thought, 
did  not  seem  to  want  that  pony  any  more. 
Amazed  at  this  sudden  indifference,  I  turned 
all  hands  out  on  shore  to  hunt  for  him  on  my 
own  account,  or,  at  any  rate,  to  hunt  for  the 
canvas  sling  which  he  had  round  his  body. 
The  whole  crew  of  the  steamer,  with  the 
exception  of  firemen  and  engineers,  rushed  up 
the  jetty,  past  the  thoughtful  Almayer,  and 
vanished  from  my  sight.  The  white  fog 
swallowed  them  up;  and  again  there  was  a 
deep  silence  that  seemed  to  extend  for  miles 
up  and  down  the  stream.  Still  taciturn, 
Almayer  started  to  climb  on  board,  and  I 

142 


A    PERSONAL    RECORD 

went  down  from  the  bridge  to  meet  him  on 
the  after-deck. 

"Would  you  mind  telHng  the  captain  that 
I  want  to  see  him  very  particularly?"  he 
asked  me,  in  a  low  tone,  letting  his  eyes  stray 
all  over  the  place. 

"Very  well.     I  will  go  and  see." 

With    the   door   of   his    cabin   wide   open. 

Captain  C ,  just  back  from  the  bath-room, 

big  and  broad-chested,  was  brushing  his 
thick,  damp,  iron-gray  hair  with  two  large 
brushes. 

"Mr.  Almayer  told  me  he  wanted  to  see 
you  very  particularly,  sir." 

Saying  these  words,  I  smiled.  I  don't  know 
why  I  smiled,  except  that  it  seemed  abso- 
lutely impossible  to  mention  Ahnayer's  name 
without  a  smile  of  a  sort.  It  had  not  to  be 
necessarily    a    mirthful    smile.     Turning    his 

head  toward  me.  Captain  C smiled,  too, 

rather  joylessly. 

"The  pony  got  away  from  him — eh.?" 

"Yes,  sir.     He  did." 

"Where  is  he?" 

"Goodness  only  knows." 

"No.  I  mean  Almayer.  Let  him  come 
along." 

143 


A    PERSONAL    RECORD 

The  captain's  stateroom  opening  straight 
on  deck  under  the  bridge,  I  had  only  to 
beckon  from  the  doorway  to  Ahnayer,  who 
had  remained  aft,  with  downcast  eyes,  on  the 
very  spot  where  I  had  left  him.  He  strolled 
up  moodily,  shook  hands,  and  at  once  asked 
permission  to  shut  the  cabin  door. 

"I  have  a  pretty  story  to  tell  you,"  were 
the  last  words  I  heard.  The  bitterness  of 
tone  was  remarkable. 

I  went  away  from  the  door,  of  course. 
For  the  moment  I  had  no  crew  on  board; 
only  the  Chinaman  carpenter,  with  a  canvas 
bag  hung  round  his  neck  and  a  hammer  in 
his  hand,  roamed  about  the  empty  decks, 
knocking  out  the  wedges  of  the  hatches  and 
dropping  them  into  the  bag  conscientiously. 
Having  nothing  to  do  I  joined  our  two  en- 
gineers at  the  door  of  the  engine-room.  It 
was  near  breakfast-time. 

"He's  turned  up  early,  hasn't  he?"  com- 
mented the  second  engineer,  and  smiled  in- 
differently. He  was  an  abstemious  man,  with 
a  good  digestion  and  a  placid,  reasonable  view 
of  life  even  when  hungry. 

"Yes,"  I  said.  "Shut  up  with  the  old 
man.     Some  very  particular  business." 

144i 


A    PERSONAL    RECORD 

"He  will  spin  him  a  damned  endless 
yarn,"  observed  the  chief  engineer. 

He  smiled  rather  sourly.  He  was  dyspep- 
tic, and  suffered  from  gnawing  hunger  in  the 
morning.  The  second  smiled  broadly,  a  smile 
that  made  two  vertical  folds  on  his  shaven 
cheeks.  And  I  smiled,  too,  but  I  was  not 
exactly  amused.  In  that  man,  whose  name 
apparently  could  not  be  uttered  anywhere  in 
the  Malay  Archipelago  without  a  smile,  there 
was  nothing  amusing  whatever.  That  morn- 
ing he  breakfasted  with  us  silently,  looking 
mostly  into  his  cup.  I  informed  him  that 
my  men  came  upon  his  pony  capering  in  the 
fog  on  the  very  brink  of  the  eight-foot-deep 
well  in  which  he  kept  his  store  of  guttah. 
The  cover  was  off,  with  no  one  near  by,  and 
the  whole  of  my  crew  just  missed  going  heels 
over  head  into  that  beastly  hole.  Jurumudi 
Itam,  our  best  quartermaster,  deft  at  fine 
needlework,  he  who  mended  the  ship's  flags 
and  sewed  buttons  on  our  coats,  was  dis- 
abled by  a  kick  on  the  shoulder. 

Both  remorse  and  gratitude  seemed  for- 
eign to  Almayer's  character.     He  mumbled: 

**Do  you  mean  that  pirate  fellow?" 

"What  pirate  fellow?  The  man  has 
145 


A    PERSONAL    RECORD 

^been   in  the  ship  ekven  years,"  I  said,  indig- 
(nantly. 

"It's  his  looks,"  Ahnayer  muttered,  for  all 
apology. 

The  sun  had  eaten  up  the  fog.  From 
where  we  sat  under  the  after-awning  we  could 
see  in  the  distance  the  pony  tied  up,  in  front 
of  Almayer's  house,  to  a  post  of  the  veran- 
da. We  were  silent  for  a  long  time.  All 
at  once  Almayer,  alluding  evidently  to  the 
subject  of  his  conversation  in  the  captain's 
cabin,  exclaimed  anxiously  across  the  table: 

"I  really  don't  know  what  I  can  do  now!" 

Captain   C only   raised  his  eyebrows 

at  him,  and  got  up  from  his  chair.  We  dis- 
persed to  our  duties,  but  Almayer,  half 
dressed  as  he  was  in  his  cretonne  pajamas 
and  the  thin  cotton  singlet,  remained  on 
board,  lingering  near  the  gangway,  as  though 
he  could  not  make  up  his  mind  whether  to  go 
home  or  stay  with  us  for  good.  Our  Chinamen 
boys  gave  him  side  glances  as  they  went  to 
and  fro;  and  Ah  Sing,  our  chief  steward,  the 
handsomest  and  most  sympathetic  of  China- 
men, catching  my  eye,  nodded  knowingly  at 
his  burly  back.  In  the  course  of  the  morn- 
ing I  approached  him  for  a  moment. 

146 


A    PERSONAL    RECORD 

"Well,  Mr.  Almayer,"  I  addressed  him, 
easily,  "you  haven't  started  on  your  letters 
yet." 

We  had  brought  him  his  mail,  and  he  had 
held  the  bundle  in  his  hand  ever  since  we  got 
up  from  breakfast.  He  glanced  at  it  when 
I  spoke,  and  for  a  moment  it  looked  as  if 
he  were  on  the  point  of  opening  his  fingers 
and  letting  the  whole  lot  fall  overboard.  I 
believe  he  was  tempted  to  do  so.  I  shall 
never  forget  that  man  afraid  of  his  letters.' 

"Have  you  been  long  out  from  Europe.?" 
he  a'sked  me. 

"Not  very.  Not  quite  eight  months,"  I 
told  him.  "I  left  a  ship  in  Samarang  with  a 
hurt  back,  and  have  been  in  the  hospital  in 
Singapore  some  weeks." 

He  sighed. 

"Trade  is  very  bad  here." 

"Indeed!" 

"Hopeless!     .     .     .     See  these  geese .f^" 

With  the  hand  holding  the  letters  he  pointed 
out  to  me  what  resembled  a  patch  of  snow 
creeping  and  swaying  across  the  distant  part  of 
his  compound.  It  disappeared  behind  some 
bushes. 

"The  only  geese  on  the  East  Coast,"  Al- 
147 


A    PERSONAL    RECORD 

mayer  informed  me,  in  a  perfunctory  mutter 
without  a  spark  of  faith,  hope,  or  pride. 
Thereupon,  with  the  same  absence  of  any 
sort  of  sustaining  spirit,  he  declared  his  in- 
tention to  select  a  fat  bird  and  send  him  on 
board  for  us  not  later  than  next  day. 

I  had  heard  of  these  largesses  before.  He 
conferred  a  goose  as  if  it  were  a  sort  of  court 
decoration  given  only  to  the  tried  friends  of 
the  house.  I  had  expected  more  pomp  in 
the  ceremony.  The  gift  had  surely  its  special 
quality,  multiple  and  rare.  From  the  only 
flock  on  the  East  Coast!  He  did  not  make 
half  enough  of  it.  That  man  did  not  under- 
stand his  opportunities.  However,  I  thanked 
him  at  some  length. 

"You  see,"  he  interrupted,  abruptly,  in  a 
very  peculiar  tone,  "the  worst  of  this  coun- 
try is  that  one  is  not  able  to  realize  .  .  .  it's 
impossible  to  realize.  .  .  ."  His  voice 
sank  into  a  languid  mutter.  "And  when  one 
has  very  large  interests  ...  very  im- 
portant interests  .  .  ."he  finished,  faintly 
.     .     .     "up  the  river." 

We  looked  at  each  other.  He  astonished 
me  by  giving  a  start  and  making  a  very 
queer  grimace. 

148 


A    PERSONAL    RECORD 

"Well,  I  must  be  off,"  he  burst  out,  hur- 
riedly.    "So  long!" 

At  the  moment  of  stepping  over  the  gang- 
way he  checked  himself,  though,  to  give  me 
a  mumbled  invitation  to  dine  at  his  house 
that  evening  with  my  captain,  an  invitation 
which  I  accepted.  I  don't  think  it  could 
have  been  possible  for  me  to  refuse. 

I  like  the  worthy  folk  who  will  talk  to  you 
of  the  exercise  of  free-will,  "at  any  rate  for 
practical  purposes."  Free,  is  it.^  For  prac- 
tical purposes !  Bosh !  How  could  I  have  re- 
fused to  dine  with  that  man.^^  I  did  not  refuse, 
simply  because  I  could  not  refuse.  Curios- 
ity, a  healthy  desire  for  a  change  of  cooking, 
common  civility,  the  talk  and  the  smiles  of 
the  previous  twenty  days,  every  condition 
of  my  existence  at  that  moment  and  place 
made  irresistibly  for  acceptance;  and,  crown- 
ing all  that,  there  was  the  ignorance — the 
ignorance,  I  say — the  fatal  want  of  fore- 
knowledge to  counterbalance  these  impera- 
tive conditions  of  the  problem.  A  refusal 
would  have  appeared  perverse  and  insane. 
Nobody,  unless  a  surly  lunatic,  would  have 
refused.  But  if  I  had  not  got  to  know  Al- 
mayer  pretty  well  it  is  almost  certain  there 

149 


A    PERSONAL    RECORD 

would  irever  have  been  a  line  of  mine  in 
print. 

I  accepted  then — and  I  am  paying  yet  the 
price  of  my  sanity.  The  possessor  of  the 
only  flock  of  geese  on  the  East  Coast  is  re- 
sponsible for  the  existence  of  some  fourteen 
volumes,  so  far.  The  number  of  geese  he 
had  called  into  being  under  adverse  climatic 
conditions  was  considerably  more  than  four- 
teen. The  tale  of  volumes  will  never  overtake 
the  counting  of  heads,  I  am  safe  to  say;  but 
my  ambitions  point  not  exactly  that  way,  and 
whatever  the  pangs  the  toil  of  writing  has  cost 
me  I  have  always  thought  kindly  of  Almayer. 

I  wonder,  had  he  known  anything  of  it, 
what  his  attitude  would  have  been.^  This 
is  something  not  to  be  discovered  in  this 
world.  But  if  we  ever  meet  in  the  Elysian 
Fields — ^where  I  cannot  depict  him  to  myself 
otherwise  than  attended  in  the  distance  by 
his  flock  of  geese  (birds  sacred  to  Jupiter) — 
and  he  addresses  me  in  the  stillness  of  that 
passionless  region,  neither  light  nor  darkness, 
neither  sound  nor  silence,  and  heaving  end- 
lessly with  billowy  mists  from  the  impalpable 
multitudes  of  the  swarming  dead,  I  think  I 
know  what  answer  to  make. 

150 


A    PERSONAL    RECORD 

I  would  say,  after  listening  courteously  to 
the  unvibrating  tone  of  his  measured  remon- 
strances, which  should  not  disturb,  of  course, 
the  solemn  eternity  of  stillness  in  the  least — 
I  would  say  something  like  this: 

*'It  is  true,  Almayer,  that  in  the  world 
below  I  have  converted  your  name  to  my 
own  uses.  But  that  is  a  very  small  larceny. 
What's  in  a  name,  O  Shade .^^  If  so  much  of 
your  old  mortal  weakness  clings  to  you  yet 
as  to  make  you  feel  aggrieved  (it  was  the 
note  of  your  earthly  voice,  Almayer),  then, 
I  entreat  you,  seek  speech  without  delay 
with  our  sublime  fellow-Shade — with  him 
who,  in  his  transient  existence  as  a  poet, 
commented  upon  the  smell  of  the  rose.  He 
will  comfort  you.  You  came  to  me  stripped'^^^ 
of  all  prestige  by  men's  queer  smiles  and  the 
disrespectful  chatter  of  every  vagrant  trader 
in  the  Islands.  Your  name  was  the  common 
property  of  the  winds;  it,  as  it  were,  floated 
naked  over  the  waters  about  the  equator.  I 
wrapped  round  its  unhonoured  form  the  royal 
mantle  of  the  tropics,  and  have  essayed  to 
put  into  the  hollow  sound  the  very  anguish 
of  paternity — feats  which  you  did  not  de- 
mand  from  me — but  remember  that  all  the 

151 


A    PERSONAL    RECORD 

toil  and  all  the  pain  were  mine.  In  your 
earthly  life  you  haunted  me,  Almayer.  Con- 
sider that  this  was  taking  a  great  liberty. 
Since  you  were  always  complaining  of  being 
lost  to  the  world,  you  should  remember  that 
if  I  had  not  believed  enough  in  your  exist- 
ence to  let  you  haunt  my  rooms  in  Bess- 
borough  Gardens,  you  would  have  been  much 
more  lost.  You  affirm  that  had  I  been  ca- 
pable of  lookihg~at  you  with  a  more  perfect 
detachment  and  a  greater  simplicity,  I  might 
have  perceived  better  the  inward  marvel- 
lousness  which,  you  insist,  attended  your 
career  upon  that  tiny  pin-point  of  light, 
hardly  visible  far,  far  below  us,  where  both 
our  graves  lie.  No  doubt!  But  reflect,  O 
complaining  Shade!  that  this  was  not  so 
much  my  fault  as  your  crowning  misfortune. 
I  believed  in  you  in  the  only  way  it  was 
possible  for  me  to  believe.  It  was  not 
worthy  of  your  merits.^  So  be  it.  But  you 
were  always  an  unlucky  man,  Almayer. 
Nothing  was  ever  quite  worthy  of  you. 
What  made  you  so  real  to  me  was  that  you 
held  this  lofty  theory  with  some  force  of 
conviction  and  with  an  admirable  consis- 
tency." 

152 


A    PERSONAL    RECORD 

It  IS  with  some  such  words  translated 
into  the  proper  shadowy  expressions  that 
I  am  prepared  to  placate  Almayer  in  the 
Elysian  Abode  of  Shades,  since  it  has  come 
to  pass  that,  having  parted  many  years  ago, 
we  are  never  to  meet  again  in  this  world. 


159 


IN  THE  career  of  the  most  unliterary  of 
writers,  in  the  sense  that  hterary  ambition 
had  never  entered  the  world  of  his  imag- 
ination, the  coming  into  existence  of  the  first 
book  is  quite  an  inexplicable  event.  In  my 
own  case  I  cannot  trace  it  back  to  any  mental 
or  psychological  cause  which  one  could  point 
out  and  hold  to.  The  greatest  of  my  gifts 
being  a  consummate  capacity  for  doing  noth- 
ing, I  cannot  even  point  to  boredom  as  a 
rational  stimulus  for  taking  up  a  pen.  The 
pen,  at  any  rate,  was  there,  and  there  is  noth- 
ing wonderful  in  that.  Everybody  keeps  a 
pen  (the  cold  steel  of  our  days)  in  his  rooms, 
in  this  enlightened  age  of  penny  stamps  and 
halfpenny  post-cards.  In  fact,  this  was  the 
epoch  when  by  means  of  postcard  and  pen 
Mr.  Gladstone  had  made  the  reputation  of  a 
novel  or  two.  And  I,  too,  had  a  pen  rolling 
about  somewhere — the  seldom-used,  the  re- 
luctantly taken-up  pen  of  a  sailor  ashore,  the 
pen  rugged  with  the  dried  ink  of  abandoned 

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attempts,  of  answers  delayed  longer  than  de- 
cency permitted,  of  letters  begun  with  infinite 
reluctance  and  put  off  suddenly  till  next  day 
— ^till  next  week,  as  like  as  not !  The  neglected, 
uncared-for  pen,  flung  away  at  the  slightest 
provocation,  and  under  the  stress  of  dire 
necessity  hunted  for  without  enthusiasm,  in  a 
perfunctory,  grumpy  worry,  in  the  ''Where 
the  devil  is  the  beastly  thing  gone  to?"  un- 
gracious spirit.  Where,  indeed!  It  might 
have  been  reposing  behind  the  sofa  for  a  day 
or  so.  My  landlady's  anemic  daughter  (as 
Ollendorff  would  have  expressed  it),  though 
commendably  neat,  had  a  lordly,  careless 
manner  of  approaching  her  domestic  duties. 
Or  it  might  even  be  resting  delicately  poised 
on  its  point  by  the  side  of  the  table-leg,  and 
when  picked  up  show  a  gaping,  inefficient 
beak  which  would  have  discouraged  any  man 
of  literary  instincts.  But  not  me!  "Never 
mind.     This  will  do." 

O  days  without  guile !  If  anybody  had  told 
me  then  that  a  devoted  household,  having 
a  generally  exaggerated  idea  of  my  talents  and 
importance,  would  be  put  into  a  state  of 
tremor  and  flurry  by  the  fuss  I  would  make 
because  of  a  suspicion  that  somebody  had 

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touched  my  sacrosanct  pen  of  authorship,  I 
would  have  never  deigned  as  much  as  the 
contemptuous  smile  of  unbelief.  There  are 
imaginings  too  unlikely  for  any  kind  of  notice, 
too  wild  for  indulgence  itself,  too  absurd  for  a 
smile.  Perhaps,  had  that  seer  of  the  future 
been  a  friend,  I  should  have  been  secretly 
saddened.  "Alas!"  I  would  have  thought, 
looking  at  him  with  an  unmoved  face,  "the 
poor  fellow  is  going  mad." 

I  would  have  been,  without  doubt,  sad- 
dened; for  in  this  world  where  the  journalists 
read  the  signs  of  the  sky,  and  the  wind  of 
heaven  itself,  blowing  where  it  listeth,  does 
so  under  the  prophetical  management  of  the 
meteorological  office,  but  where  the  secret 
of  human  hearts  cannot  be  captured  by  prying 
or  praying,  it  was  infinitely  more  likely  that 
the  sanest  of  my  friends  should  nurse  the  germ 
of  incipient  madness  than  that  I  should  turn 
into  a  writer  of  tales. 

To  survey  with  wonder  the  changes  of  one's 
own  self  is  a  fascinating  pursuit  for  idle  hours. 
The  field  is  so  wide,  the  surprises  so  varied, 
the  subject  so  full  of  unprofitable  but  curious 
hints  as  to  the  work  of  unseen  forces,  that  one 
does  not  weary  easily  of  it.     I  am  not  speaking 

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here  of  megalomaniacs  who  rest  uneasy  under 
the  crown  of  their  unbounded  conceit — who 
really  never  rest  in  this  world,  and  when  out 
of  it  go  on  fretting  and  fuming  on  the  strait- 
ened circumstances  of  their  last  habitation, 
where  all  men  must  lie  in  obscure  equality. 
Neither  am  I  thinking  of  those  ambitious 
minds  who,  always  looking  forward  to  some 
aim  of  aggrandizement,  can  spare  no  time  for 
a  detached,  impersonal  glance  upon  them- 
selves. 

And  that's  a  pity.  They  are  unlucky. 
These  two  kinds,  together  with  the  much 
larger  band  of  the  totally  unimaginative, 
oTThose  unfortunate  beings  in  whose  empty 
and  unseeing  gaze  (as  a  great  French  writer 
has  put  it)  ''the  whole  universe  vanishes  into 
blank  nothingness,"  miss,  perhaps,  the  true 
task  of  us  men  whose  day  is  short  on  this 
earth,  tFe  abode  of  conflicting  opinions.  The 
ethical  view  of  the  universe  involves  us  at 
last  in  so  many  cruel  and  absurd  contradic- 
tions, where  the  last  vestiges  of  faith,  hope, 
charity,  and  even  of  reason  itself,  seem  ready 
to  perish,  that  I  have  come  to  suspect  that 
the  aim  of  creation  cannot  be  ethical  at  all. 
I  would  fondly  believe  that  its  object  is  purely 

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spectacular:  a  spectacle  for  awe,  love,  adora- 
tion, or  hate,  if  you  like,  but  in  this  view — and 
in  this  view  alone — ^never  for  despair!  Those 
visions,  delicious  or  poignant,  are  a  moral  end 
in  themselves.  The  rest  is  our  affair — the 
laughter,  the  tears,  the  tenderness,  the  in- 
dignation, the  high  tranquillity  of  a  steeled 
heart,  the  detached  curiosity  of  a  subtle  mind 
— that's  our  affair!  And  the  unwearied  self- 
forgetful  attention  to  every  phase  of  the 
living  universe  reflected  in  our  consciousness 
may  be  our  appointed  task  on  this  earth — 
a  task  in  which  fate  has  perhaps  engaged 
nothing  of  us  except  our  conscience,  gifted 
with  a  voice  in  order  to  bear  true  testimony 
to  the  visible  wonder,  the  haunting  terror, 
the  infinite  passion,  and  the  illimitable  seren- 
ity; to  the  supreme  law  and  the  abiding  mys- 
tery of  the  sublime  spectacle. 

Chi  lo  sa  ?  It  may  be  true.  In  this  view 
there  is  room  for  every  religion  except  for 
the  inverted  creed  of  impiety,  the  mask  and 
cloak  of  arid  despair;  for  every  joy  and  every 
sorrow,  for  every  fair  dream,  for  every  char- 
itable hope.  The  great  aim  is  to  remain  true 
to  the  emotions  called  out  of  the  deep 
encircled  by  the  firmament  of  stars,  whose 

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infinite  numbers  and  awful  distances  may 
move  us  to  laughter  or  tears  (was  it  the 
Walrus  or  the  Carpenter,  in  the  poem,  who 
'*wept  to  see  such  quantities  of  sand"?),  or, 
again,  to  a  properly  steeled  heart,  may  matter 
nothing  at  all. 

The  casual  quotation,  which  had  suggested 
itself  out  of  a  poem  full  of  merit,  leads  me 
to  remark  that  in  the  conception  of  a  purely 
spectacular  universe,  where  inspiration  of 
every  sort  has  a  rational  existence,  the  artist 
of  every  kind  finds  a  natural  place;  and  among 
them  the  poet  as  the  seer  par  excellence.  Even 
the  writer  of  prose,  who  in  his  less  noble  and 
more  toilsome  task  should  be  a  man  with  the 
steeled  heart,  is  worthy  of  a  place,  providing 
he  looks  on  with  undimmed  eyes  and  keeps 
laughter  out  of  his  voice,  let  who  will  laugh 
or  cry.  Yes!  Even  he,  the  prose  artist  of 
fiction,  which  after  all  is  but  truth  often 
dragged  out  of  a  well  and  clothed  in  the 
painted  robe  of  imagined  phrases — even  he 
Tias  his  place  among  kings,  demagogues, 
priests,  charlatans,  dukes,  giraffes,  cabinet 
ministers,  Fabians,  bricklayers,  apostles,  ants, 
scientists,  Kafirs,  soldiers,  sailors,  elephants, 
lawyers,  dandies,  microbes,  and  constellations 

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of  a  universe  whose  amazing  spectacle  is  a 
moral  end  in  itself. 

Here  I  perceive  (without  speaking  ofiFense) 
the  reader  assuming  a  subtle  expression,  as 
if  the  cat  were  out  of  the  bag.  I  take  the 
novelist's  freedom  to  observe  the  reader's 
mind  formulating  the  exclamation:  "That's 
it !    The  fellow  talks  pro  domo.'' 

Indeed  it  was  not  the  intention!  When 
I  shouldered  the  bag  I  was  not  aware  of  the 
cat  inside.  But,  after  all,  why  not.^^  The 
fair  courtyards  of  the  House  of  Art  are 
thronged  by  many  humble  retainers.  And 
there  is  no  retainer  so  devoted  as  he  who  is 
allowed  to  sit  on  the  doorstep.  The  fellows 
who  have  got  inside  are  apt  to  think  too  much 
of  themselves.  This  last  remark,  I  beg  to 
state,  is  not  malicious  within  the  definition 
of  the  law  of  libel.  It's  fair  comment  on  a 
matter  of  public  interest.  But  never  mind. 
Pro  domo.  So  be  it.  For  his  house  tant  que 
vous  voudrez.  And  yet  in  truth  I  was  by  no 
means  anxious  to  justify  my  existence.  The 
attempt  would  have  been  not  only  needless 
and  absurd,  but  almost  inconceivable,  in  a 
purely  spectacular  universe,  where  no  such 
disagreeable  necessity  can  possibly  arise.     It 

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is  sufficient  for  me  to  say  (and  I  am  saying  it  at 
some  length  in  these  pages) :  J'ai  ecu,  I  have 
existed,  obscure  among  the  wonders  and 
terrors  of  my  time,  as  the  Abbe  Sieyes,  the 
original  utterer  of  the  quoted  words,  had 
managed  to  exist  through  the  violences,  the 
crimes,  and  the  enthusiasms  of  the  French 
Revolution.  J'ai  vecu,  as  I  apprehend  most 
of  us  manage  to  exist,  missing  all  along  the 
varied  forms  of  destruction  by  ahair's-breadth, 
saving  my  body,  that's  clear,  and  perhaps  my 
soul  also,  but  not  without  some  damage  here 
and  there  to  the  fine  edge  of  my  conscience, 
that  heirloom  of  the  ages,  of  the  race,  of  the 
group,  of  the  family,  colourable  and  plastic, 
fashioned  by  the  words,  the  looks,  the  acts, 
and  even  by  the  silences  and  abstentions 
surrounding  one's  childhood;  tinged  in  a 
complete  scheme  of  delicate  shades  and  crude 
colours  by  the  inherited  traditions,  beliefs,  or 
prejudices — unaccountable,  despotic,  persua- 
sive, and  often,  in  its  texture,  romantic. 

And  often  romantic!     .     .     .     The  matter 
in  hand,  however,  is  to  keep  these  reminis- 
cences from  turning  into  confessions,  a  form       y 
of  literary  activity  discredited  by  Jean  Jacques 
Rousseau  on  account  of  the  extreme  thorough- 

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ness  he  brought  to  the  work  of  justifying  his 
own  existence;  for  that  such  was  his  purpose 
is  palpably,  even  grossly,  visible  to  an  un- 
prejudiced eye.  But  then,  you  see,  the  man 
was  not  a  writer  of  fiction.  He  was  an  artless 
moralist,  as  is  clearly  demonstrated  by  his 
anniversaries  being  celebrated  with  marked 
emphasis  by  the  heirs  of  the  French  Revolu- 
tion, which  was  not  a  political  movement  at 
all,  but  a  great  outburst  of  morality.  He  had 
no  imagination,  as  the  most  casual  perusal  of 
y  Emile"  will  prove.  He  was  no  novelist,  whose 
^rst  virtue  is  the  exact  understanding  of  the 
limits  traced  by  the  reality  of  his  time  to  the 
play  of  his  invention.  Inspiration  comes  from 
the  earth,  which  has  a  past,  a  history,  a  future, 
not  from  the  cold  and  immutable  heaven. 
A  writer  of  imaginative  prose  (even  more 
than  any  other  sort  of  artist)  stands  con- 
fessed in  his  works.  His  conscience,  his 
deeper  sense  of  things,  lawful  and  unlawful, 
gives  him  his  attitude  before  the  world. 
Indeed,  every  one  who  puts  pen  to  paper 
for  the  reading  of  strangers  (unless  a  moral- 
ist, who,  generally  speaking,  has  no  con- 
science except  the  one  he  is  at  pains  to  produce 
for  the  use   of  others)    can   speak  of  noth- 

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ing  else.  It  is  M.  Anatole  France,  the  most 
eloquent  and  just  of  French  prose-writers, 
who  says  that  we  must  recognize  at  last  that, 
"failing  the _resolation  to  hold  our  peace,  we 
can  only  talk  of  ourselves." 

This  remark,  if  I  remember  rightly,  was 
made  in  the  course  of  a  sparring  match  with 
the  late  Ferdinand  Brunetiere  over  the  prhi- 
ciples  and  rules  of  literary  criticism.  As  was 
fitting  for  a  man  to  whom  we  owe  the  mem- 
orable saying,  "The  good  critic  is  he  who 
relates  the  adventures  of  his  soul  among 
masterpieces,"  M.  Anatole  France  main- 
tained that  there  were  no  rules  and  no  prin- 
ciples. And  that  may  Ee  very  true.  Rules, 
principles,  and  standards  die  and  vanish  every 
day.  Perhaps  they  are  all  dead  and  vanished 
By^this  time.  These,  if  ever,  are  the  brave, 
free  days  of  destroyed  landmarks,  while  the 
ingenious  minds  are  busy  inventing  the  forms 
of  the  new  beacons  which,  it  is  consoling  to 
think,  will  be  set  up  presently  in  the  old 
places.  But  what  is  interesting  to  a  writer 
is  the  possession  of  an  inward  certitude  that 
literary  criticism  will  never  die,  for  man  (so 
variously  defined)  is,  before  everything  else, 
a   critical   animal.     And   as   long   as   distin- 

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7 


A    PERSONAL    RECORD 

guislied  minds  are  ready  to  treat  it  in  the 
spirit  of  high  adventure  hterary  criticism 
shall  appeal  to  us  with  all  the  charm  and 
wisdom  of  a  well-told  tale  of  personal  ex- 
perience. 

For  Englishmen  especially,  of  all  the  races 
of  the  earth,  a  task,  any  task,  undertaken 
in  an  adventurous  spirit  acquires  the  merit 
of  romance.  But  the  critics  as  a  rule  exhibit 
but  little  of  an  adventurous  spirit.  They 
take  risks,  of  course — one  can  hardly  live  with- 
out that.  The  daily  bread  is  served  out  to 
us  (however  sparingly)  with  a  pinch  of  salt. 
Otherwise  one  would  get  sick  of  the  diet  one 
prays  for,  and  that  would  be  not  only  im- 
proper, but  impious.  From  impiety  of  that 
or  any  other  kind — save  us!  An  ideal  of  re- 
served manner,  adhered  to  from  a  sense  of 
proprieties,  from  shyness,  perhaps,  or  cau- 
tion, or  simply  from  weariness,  induces,  I 
suspect,  some  writers  of  criticism  to  conceal 
the  adventurous  side  of  their  calling,  and  then 
the  criticism  becomes  a  mere  "notice,"  as 
it  were,  the  relation  of  a  journey  where  noth- 
ing but  the  distances  and  the  geology  of  a 
new  country  should  be  set  down ;  the  glimpses 
of  strange  beasts,  the  dangers  of  flood  and 

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field,  the  hairbreadth  escapes,  and  the  suf-'^ 
ferings  (oh,  the  sufferings,  too!  I  have  no  ? 
doubt  of  the  sufferings)  of  the  traveller  being 
carefully  kept  out;  no  shady  spot,  no  fruitful 
plant  being  ever  mentioned  either;  so  that 
the  whole  performance  looks  like  a  mere  feat 
of  agility  on  the  part  of  a  trained  pen  running 
in  a  desert.  A  cruel  spectacle — a  most  de- 
plorable adventure!  "Life,"  in  the  words 
of  an  immortal  thinker  of,  I  should  say, 
bucolic  origin,  but  whose  perishable  name  is 
lost  to  the  worship  of  posterity — "life  is 
not  all  beer  and  skittles."  Neither  is  the 
writing  of  novels.  It  isn't,  really.  Je  vous 
donne  ma  parole  d'honneur  that  it — is — not. 
Not  all,  I  am  thus  emphatic  because  some 
years  ago,  I  remember,  the  daughter  of  a 
general.     .     .     . 

Sudden  revelations  of  the  profane  world 
must  have  come  now  and  then  to  hermits 
in  their  cells,  to  the  cloistered  monks  of 
middle  ages,  to  lonely  sages,  men  of  science, 
reformers;  the  revelations  of  the  world's 
superficial  judgment,  shocking  to  the  souls 
concentrated  upon  their  own  bitter  labour  in 
the  cause  of  sanctity,  or  of  knowledge,  or  of 
temperance,  let  us  say,  or  of  art,  if  only  the 

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art  of  cracking  jokes  or  playing  the  flute. 
And  thus  this  general's  daughter  came  to  me 
— or  I  should  say  one  of  the  general's  daughters 
did.  There  were  three  of  these  bachelor 
ladies,  of  nicely  graduated  ages,  who  held  a 
neighbouring  farm-house  in  a  united  and  more 
or  less  military  occupation.  The  eldest  warred 
against  the  decay  of  manners  in  the  village 
children,  and  executed  frontal  attacks  upon 
the  village  mothers  for  the  conquest  of  cour- 
tesies. It  sounds  futile,  but  it  was  really  a  war 
for  an  idea.  The  second  skirmished  and 
scouted  all  over  the  country;  and  it  was  that 
one  who  pushed  a  reconnaissance  right  to  my 
very  table — I  mean  the  one  who  wore  stand- 
up  collars.  She  was  really  calling  upon  my 
wife  in  the  soft  spirit  of  afternoon  friendli- 
ness, but  with  her  usual  martial  determination. 
She  marched  into  my  room  swinging  her 
stick  .  .  .  but  no — I  mustn't  exaggerate. 
It  is  not  my  specialty.  I  am  not  a  humoristic 
writer.  In  all  soberness,  then,  all  I  am  cer- 
tain of  is  that  she  had  a  stick  to  swing. 

No  ditch  or  wall  encompassed  my  abode. 
The  window  was  open;  the  door,  too,  stood 
open  to  that  best  friend  of  my  work,  the 
warm,  still  sunshine  of  the  wide  fields.     They 

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lay  around  me  infinitely  helpful,  but,  truth 
to  say,  I  had  not  known  for  weeks  whether 
the  sun  shone  upon  the  earth  and  whether 
the  stars  above  still  moved  on  their  appointed 
courses.  I  was  just  then  giving  up  some 
days  of  my  allotted  span  to  the  last  chapters 
of  the  novel  "Nostromo,"  a  tale  of  an  imaginary 
(but  true)  seaboard,  which  is  still  mentioned 
now  and  again,  and  indeed  kindly,  sometimes 
in  connection  with  the  word  "failure"  and 
sometimes  in  conjunction  with  the  word 
''astonishing."  I  have  no  opinion  on  this 
discrepancy.  It's  the  sort  of  difference  that 
can  never  be  settled.  All  I  know  is  that,  for 
twenty  months,  neglecting  the  common  joys  ^ts^ 
of  life  that  fall  to  the  lot  of  the  humblest  on 
this  earth,  I  had,  like  the  prophet  of  old,  y 
"wrestled  with  the  Lord"  for  my  creation,-^ 
for  the  headlands  of  the  coast,  for  the  dark-l 
ness  of  the  Placid  Gulf,  the  light  on  the  snows, 
the  clouds  in  the  sky,  and  for  the  breath 
of  life  that  had  to  be  blown  into  the  shapes 
of  men  and  women,  of  Latin  and  Saxon,  of 
Jew  and  Gentile.  These  are,  perhaps,  strong 
words,  but  it  is  difficult  to  characterize  other- 
wise the  intimacy  and  the  strain  of  a  creative 
effort  in  which  mind  and  will  and  conscience 

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A    PERSONAL    RECORD 

are  engaged  to  the  full,  hour  after  hour,  day 
after  day,  away  from  the  world,  and  to  the 
exclusion  of  all  that  makes  life  really  lovable 
and  gentle — something  for  which  a  material 
parallel  can  only  be  found  in  the  everlasting 
sombre  stress  of  the  westward  winter  passage 
round  Cape  Horn.  For  that,  too,  is  the 
wrestling  of  men  with  the  might  of  their 
Creator,  in  a  great  isolation  from  the  world, 
without  the  amenities  and  consolations  of  life, 
a  lonely  struggle  under  a  sense  of  overmatched 
littleness,  for  no  reward  that  could  be  ade- 
quate, but  for  the  mere  winning  of  a  longitude. 
Yet  a  certain  longitude,  once  won,  cannot  be 
disputed.  The  sun  and  the  stars  and  the 
shape  of  your  earth  are  the  witnesses  of  your 
gain;  whereas  a  handful  of  pages,  no  matter 
how  much  you  have  made  them  your  own, 
are  at  best  but  an  obscure  and  questionable 
spoil.  Here  they  are.  "Failure" — "Aston- 
ishing": take  your  choice;  or  perhaps  both, 
or  neither — a  mere  rustle  and  flutter  of  pieces 
of  paper  settling  down  in  the  night,  and  un- 
distinguishable,  like  the  snowflakes  of  a  great 
drift  destined  to  melt  away  in  sunshine. 

"How  do  you  do.^" 

It  was  the  greeting  of  the  general's  daugh- 
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ter.  I  had  heard  nothing — no  rustle,  no  foot- 
steps. I  had  felt  only  a  moment  before  a 
sort  of  premonition  of  evil;  I  had  the  sense 
of  an  inauspicious  presence — just  that  much 
warning  and  no  more;  and  then  came  the 
sound  of  the  voice  and  the  jar  as  of  a  terrible 
fall  from  a  great  height — a  fall,  let  us  say, 
from  the  highest  of  the  clouds  floating  in 
gentle  procession  over  the  fields  in  the  faint 
westerly  air  of  that  July  afternoon.  I  picked 
myself  up  quickly,  of  course;  in  other  words, 
I  jumped  up  from  my  chair  stunned  and  dazed, 
every  nerve  quivering  with  the  pain  of  being 
uprooted  out  of  one  world  and  flung  down 
into  another — ^perfectly  civil. 

"Oh!  How  do  you  do.^^  Won't  you  sit 
down?" 

That's  what  I  said.  This  horrible  but,  I 
assure  you,  perfectly  true  reminiscence  tells 
you  more  than  a  whole  volume  of  confessions 
a  la  Jean  Jacques  Rousseau  would  do.  Ob- 
serve! I  didn't  howl  at  her,  or  start  up- 
setting furniture,  or  throw  myself  on  the 
floor  and  kick,  or  allow  myself  to  hint  in  any 
other  way  at  the  appalling  magnitude  of  the 
disaster.  The  whole  world  of  Costaguana  (the 
country,  you  may  remember,  of  my  seaboard 

169 


A    PERSONAL    RECORD 

tale),  men,  women,  headlands,  houses,  moun- 
tains, town,  campo  (there  was  not  a  single 
I  brick,  stone,  or  grain  of  sand  of  its  soil  I  had 
I  not  placed  in' position  with  my  own  hands); 
all  the  history,  geography,  politics,  finance; 
the  wealth  of  Charles  Gould's  silver-mine,  and 
the  splendour  of  the  magnificent  Capataz  de 
Cargadores,  whose  name,  cried  out  in  the 
night  (Dr.  Monygham  heard  it  pass  over 
his  head — in  Linda  Viola's  voice),  dominated 
even  after  death  the  dark  gulf  containing  his 
conquests  of  treasure  and  love — all  that  had 
come  down  crashing  about  my  ears.  I  felt 
I  could  never  pick  up  the  pieces — and  in  that 
very  moment  I  was  saying,  "Won't  you  sit 
down?" 

The  sea  is  strong  medicine.  Behold  what 
the  quarter-deck  training  even  in  a  merchant 
ship  will  do!  This  episode  should  give  you 
a  new  view  of  the  English  and  Scots  seamen 
(a  much-caricatured  folk)  who  had  the  last 
say  in  the  formation  of  my  character.  One 
is  nothing  if  not  modest,  but  in  this  disaster 
I  think  I  have  done  some  honour  to  their 
simple  teaching.  "Won't  you  sit  down?" 
Very  fair;  very  fair,  indeed.  She  sat  down. 
Her  amused  glance  strayed  all  over  the  room. 

170 


A    PERSONAL    RECORD 

There  were  pages  of  MS.  on  the  table  and 
under  the  table,  a  batch  of  typed  copy  on  a 
chair,  single  leaves  had  fluttered  away  into 
distant  corners;  there  were  there  living  pages, 
pages  scored  and  wounded,  dead  pages  that 
would  be  burned  at  the  end  of  the  day — the 
litter  of  a  cruel  battle-field,  of  a  long,  long, 
and  desperate  fray.  Long !  I  suppose  I  went 
to  bed  sometimes,  and  got  up  the  same  number 
of  times.  Yes,  I  suppose  I  slept,  and  ate  the 
food  put  before  me,  and  talked  connectedly 
to  my  household  on  suitable  occasions.  But  I 
had  never  been  aware  of  the  even  flow  of 
daily  life,  made  easy  and  noiseless  for  me  by 
a  silent,  watchful,  tireless  affection.  Indeed, 
it  seemed  to  me  that  I  had  been  sitting  at  that 
table  surrounded  by  the  litter  of  a  desperate 
fray  for  days  and  nights  on  end.  It  seemed 
so,  because  of  the  intense  weariness  of  which 
that  interruption  had  made  me  aware — the 
awful  disenchantment  of  a  mind  realizing 
suddenly  the  futility  of  an  enormous  task, 
joined  to  a  bodily  fatigue  such  as  no  ordinary 
amount  of  fairly  heavy  physical  labour  could 
ever  account  for.  I  have  carried  bags  of 
wheat  on  my  back,  bent  almost  double  under 
a  ship's  deck-beams,  from  six  in  the  morning 

171 


A    PERSONAL    RECORD 

till  six  in  the  evening  (with  an  hour  and  a  half 
off  for  meals),  so  I  ought  to  know. 

And  I  love  letters.  I  am  jealous  of  their 
honour  and  concerned  for  the  dignity  and 
comeliness  of  their  service.  I  was,  most 
likely,  the  only  writer  that  neat  lady  had 
ever  caught  in  the  exercise  of  his  craft,  and 
it  distressed  me  not  to  be  able  to  remember 
when  it  was  that  I  dressed  myself  last,  and 
how.  No  doubt  that  would  be  all  right  in 
essentials.  The  fortune  of  the  house  in- 
cluded a  pair  of  gray-blue  watchful  eyes  that 
would  see  to  that.  But  I  felt,  somehow,  as 
grimy  as  a  Costaguana  lepero  after  a  day's 
fighting  in  the  streets,  rumpled  all  over  and 
dishevelled  down  to  my  very  heels.  And  I 
am  afraid  I  blinked  stupidly.  All  this  was 
bad  for  the  honour  of  letters  and  the  dignity  of , 
their  service.  Seen  indistinctly  through  the 
dust  of  my  collapsed  universe,  the  good  lady 
glanced  about  the  room  with  a  slightly  amused 
serenity.  And  she  was  smiling.  What  on 
earth  was  she  smiling  at.^  She  remarked 
casually : 

"I  am  afraid  I  interrupted  you." 

"Not  at  all." 

She  accepted   the   denial  in  perfect  good 
172 


A    PERSONAL    RECORD 

faith.  And  it  was  strictly  true.  Interruptec! 
— indeed!  She  had  robbed  me  of  at  least 
twenty  lives,  each  infinitely  more  poignant  and 
real  than  her  own,  because  informed  with 
passion,  possessed  of  convictions,  involved  in 
great  affairs  created  out  of  my  own  substance 
for  an  anxiously  meditated  end. 

She  remained  silent  for  a  while,  then  said, 
with  a  last  glance  all  round  at  the  litter  of  the 
fray: 

"And  you  sit  like  this  here  writing  your 
— ^your     .     .     ." 

"  I— what.?  Oh,  yes !  I  sit  here  all  day." 
"It  must  be  perfectly  delightful." 
I  suppose  that,  being  no  longer  very  young, 
I  might  have  been  on  the  verge  of  having 
a  stroke;  but  she  had  left  her  dog  in  the 
porch,  and  my  boy's  dog,  patrolling  the  field 
in  front,  had  espied  him  from  afar.  He  came 
on  straight  and  swift  like  a  cannon-ball,  and 
the  noise  of  the  fight,  which  burst  suddenly 
upon  our  ears,  was  more  than  enough  to 
scare  away  a  fit  of  apoplexy.  We  went  out 
hastily  and  separated  the  gallant  animals. 
Afterward  I  told  the  lady  where  she  would 
find  my  wife — just  round  the  corner,  under 
the  trees.     She  nodded  and  went  off  with  her 

173 


A    PERSONAL.  RECORD 

dog,  leaving  me  appalled  before  the  death  and 
devastation  she  had  lightly  made — and  with 
the  awfully  instructive  sound  of  the  word 
"delightful"  lingering  in  my  ears. 

Nevertheless,  later  on,  I  duly  escorted  her 
to  the  field  gate.  I  wanted  to  be  civil,  of 
course  (what  are  twenty  lives  in  a  mere  novel 
that  one  should  be  rude  to  a  lady  on  their 
account?),  but  mainly,  to  adopt  the  good, 
sound  Ollendorffian  style,  because  I  did  not 
want  the  dog  of  the  general's  daughter  to 
fight  again  {encore)  with  the  faithful  dog  of 
my  infant  son  {mon  petit  garcon). — Was  I 
afraid  that  the  dog  of  the  general's  daughter 
would  be  able  to  overcome  (vaincre)  the  dog 
of  my  cliild!^ — No,  I  was  not  afraid.  .  .  . 
But  away  with  the  Ollendorff  method.  How- 
ever appropriate  and  seemingly  imavoidable 
when  I  touch  upon  anything  appertaining 
to  the  lady,  it  is  most  unsuitable  to  the  origin, 
character,  and  history  of  the  dog;  for  the  dog 
was  the  gift  to  the  child  from  a  man  for  whom 
words  had  anything  but  an  OllendorflBan 
value,  a  man  almost  childlike  in  the  impulsive 
movements  of  his  untutored  genius,  the  most 
single-minded  of  verbal  impressionists,  using 
his  great  gifts  of  straight  feeling  and  right 

174 


A    PERSONAL    RECORD 

expression  with  a  fine  sincerity  and  a  strong 
if^  perhaps,  not  fully  conscious  conviction. 
His  art  did  not  obtain,  I  fear,  all  the  credit 
its  unsophisticated  inspiration  deserved.  I 
am  alluding  to  the  late  Stephen  Crane,  the 
author  of  "The  Red  Badge  of  Courage,"  a 
work  of  imagination  which  found  its  short 
moment  of  celebrity  in  the  last  decade  of  the 
departed  century.  Other  books  followed.  Not 
many.  He  had  not  the  time.  It  was  an  in- 
dividual and  complete  talent  which  obtained 
but  a  grudging,  somewhat  supercilious  recog- 
nition from  the  world  at  large.  For  himself 
one  hesitates  to  regret  his  early  death.  Like' 
one  of  the  men  in  his  "Open  Boat,"  one  felt 
that  he  was  of  those  whom  fate  seldom  allows 
to  make  a  safe  landing  after  much  toil  and 
bitterness  at  the  oar.  I  confess  to  an  abiding 
affection  for  that  energetic,  slight,  fragile, 
intensely  living  and  transient  figure.  He 
liked  me,  even  before  we  met,  on  the  strength 
of  a  page  or  two  of  my  writing,  and  after  we 
had  met  I  am  glad  to  think  he  liked  me  still. 
He  used  to  point  out  to  me  with  great  earnest- 
ness, and  even  with  some  severity,  that  "a 
boy  ought  to  have  a  dog."  I  suspect  that  he 
was  shocked  at  my  neglect  of  parental  duties. 

175 


A    PERSONAL    RECORD 

Ultimately  it  was  he  who  provided  the  dog. 
Shortly  afterward,  one  day,  after  playing 
with  the  child  on  the  rug  for  an  hour  or  so 
with  the  most  intense  absorption,  he  raised 
his  head  and  declared  firmly,  "I  shall  teach 
your  boy  to  ride."  That  was  not  to  be. 
He  was  not  given  the  time. 

But  here  is  the  dog — an  old  dog  noT^ 
Broad  and  low  on  his  bandy  paws,  with  a 
black  head  on  a  white  body  and  a  ridiculous 
black  spot  at  the  other  end  of  him,  he  pro- 
vokes, when  he  walks  abroad,  smiles  not 
altogether  unkind.  Grotesque  and  engaging 
in  the  whole  of  his  appearance,  his  usual 
attitudes  are  meek,  but  his  temperament 
discloses  itself  unexpectedly  pugnacious  in 
the  presence  of  his  kind.  As  he  lies  in  the 
firelight,  his  head  well  up,  and  a  fixed,  far- 
away gaze  directed  at  the  shadows  of  the 
room,  he  achieves  a  striking  nobility  of  pose 
in  the  calm  consciousness  of  an  unstained 
life.  He  has  brought  up  one  baby,  and  now, 
after  seeing  his  first  charge  off  to  school,  he  is 
bringing  up  another  with  the  same  conscien- 
tious devotion,  but  with  a  more  deliberate 
gravity  of  manner,  the  sign  of  greater  wis' 
dom  and  riper  experience,  but  also  of  rheu- 

176 


A    PERSONAL    RECORD 

matism,  I  fear.  From  the  morning  bath 
to  the  evening  ceremonies  of  the  cot,  you 
attend  the  Httle  two-legged  creature  of  your 
adoption,  being  yourself  treated  in  the  exer- 
cise of  your  duties  with  every  possible  regard, 
with  infinite  consideration,  by  every  person 
in  the  house — even  as  I  myself  am  treated; 
only  you  deserve  it  more.  The  general's 
daughter  would  tell  you  that  it  must  be 
"perfectly  delightful." 

Aha!  old  dog.  She  never  heard  you  yelp 
with  acute  pain  (it's  that  poor  left  ear)  the 
while,  with  incredible  self-command,  you 
preserve  a  rigid  immobility  for  fear  of  over- 
turning the  little  two-legged  creature.  She 
has  never  seen  your  resigned  smile  when 
the  little  two-legged  creature,  interrogated, 
sternly,  "What  are  you  doing  to  the  good 
dog?"  answers,  with  a  wide,  innocent  stare: 
"Nothing.     Only  loving  him,   mama  dear!" 

The  general's  daughter  does  not  know  the 
secret  terms  of  self-imposed  tasks,  good  dog, 
the  pain  that  may  lurk  in  the  very  rewards 
of  rigid  self-command.  But  we  have  lived 
together  many  years.  We  have  grown  older, 
too;  and  though  our  work  is  not  quite  done 
yet  we  may  indulge  now  and  then  in  a  little 

177 


A    PERSONAL    RECORD 

introspection  before  the  fire — meditate  on  the 
art  of  bringing  up  babies  and  on  the  perfect 
delight  of  writing  tales  where  so  many  lives 
come  and  go  at  the  cost  of  one  which  slips 
imperceptibly  away. 


178 


VI 

IN  THE  retrospect  of  a  life  which  had,  be- 
sides its  preliminary  stage  of  childhood 
and  early  youth,  two  distinct  develop- 
ments, and  even  two  distinct  elements,  such 
as  earth  and  water,  for  its  successive  scenes,  a 
certain  amount  of  naiveness  is  unavoidable.  I 
am  conscious  of  it  in  these  pages.  This  re- 
mark is  put  forward  in  no  apologetic  spirit. 
As  years  go  by  and  the  number  of  pages  grows 
steadily,  the  feeling  grows  upon  one,  too,  that 
one  can  write  only  for  friends.  Then  why 
should  one  put  them  to  the  necessity  of 
protesting  (as  a  friend  would  do)  that  no 
apology  is  necessary,  or  put,  perchance,  into 
their  heads  the  doubt  of  one's  discretion.^ 
So  much  as  to  the  care  due  to  those  friends 
whom  a  word  here,  a  line  there,  a  fortunate 
page  of  just  feeling  in  the  right  place,  some 
happy  simplicity,  or  even  some  lucky  subtlety, 
has  drawn  from  the  great  multitude  of  fellow 
beings  even  as  a  fish  is  drawn  from  the  depths 
of   the   sea.    Fishing   is   notoriously    (I   am 

179 


A    PERSONAL    RECORD 

talking  now  of  the  deep  sea)  a  matter  of  luck. 
As  to  one's  enemies,  they  will  take  care  of 
themselves. 

There  is  a  gentleman,  for  instance,  who, 
metaphorically  speaking,  jumps  upon  me  with 
both  feet.  This  image  has  no  grace,  but  it  is 
exceedingly  apt  to  the  occasion — to  the  sev- 
eral occasions.  I  don't  know  precisely  how 
long  he  has  been  indulging  in  that  intermit- 
tent exercise,  whose  seasons  are  ruled  by  the 
custom  of  the  publishing  trade.  Somebody 
pointed  him  out  (in  printed  shape,  of  course) 
to  my  attention  some  time  ago,  and  straight- 
way I  experienced  a  sort  of  reluctant  affection 
for  that  robust  man.  He  leaves  not  a  shred 
of  my  substance  untrodden:  for  the  waiter's 
substance  is  his  writing;  the  rest  of  him  is 
but  a  vain  shadow,  cherished  or  hated  on 
uncritical  grounds.  Not  a  shred!  Yet  the 
sentiment  owned  to  is  not  a  freak  of  affecta- 
tion or  perversity.  It  has  a  deeper,  and,  I 
venture  to  think,  a  more  estimable  origin  than 
the  caprice  of  emotional  lawlessness.  It  is, 
indeed,  lawful,  in  so  much  that  it  is  given 
(reluctantly)  for  a  consideration,  for  several 
considerations.  There  is  that  robustness,  for 
instance,    so   often   the   sign   of    good   moral 

180 


A    PERSONAL    RECORD 

balance.  That's  a  consideration.  It  is  not, 
indeed,  pleasant  to  be  stamped  upon,  but  the 
very  thoroughness  of  the  operation,  implying 
not  only  a  careful  reading,  but  some  real 
insight  into  work  whose  qualities  and  defects, 
whatever  they  may  be,  are  not  so  much  on 
the  surface,  is  something  to  be  thankful  for  in 
view  of  the  fact  that  it  may  happen  to  one's 
work  to  be  condemned  without  being  read 
at  all.  This  is  the  most  fatuous  adventure 
that  can  well  happen  to  a  writer  venturing  his 
soul  among  criticisms.  It  can  do  one  no  harm, 
of  course,  but  it  is  disagreeable.  It  is  dis- 
agreeable in  the  same  way  as  discovering  a 
three-card-trick  man  among  a  decent  lot  of 
folk  in  a  third-class  compartment.  The  open 
impudence  of  the  whole  transaction,  appealing 
insidiously  to  the  folly  and  credulity  of  man- 
kind, the  brazen,  shameless  patter,  proclaim- 
ing the  fraud  openly  while  insisting  on  the 
fairness  of  the  game,  give  one  a  feeling  of 
sickening  disgust.  The  honest  violence  of  a 
plain  man  playing  a  fair  game  fairly — even  if 
he  means  to  knock  you  over — may  appear 
shocking,  but  it  remains  within  the  pale  of 
decency.  Damaging  as  it  may  be,  it  is  in  no 
sense    offensive.     One    may    well    feel    some 

181 


A    PERSONAL    RECORD 

regard  for  honesty,  even  if  practised  upon 
one's  own  vile  body.  But  it  is  very  obvious 
that  an  enemy  of  that  sort  will  not  be  stayed 
by  explanations  or  placated  by  apologies. 
Were  I  to  advance  the  plea  of  youth  in  excuse 
of  the  naiveness  to  be  found  in  these  pages, 
he  would  be  likely  to  say  "Bosh!"  in  a  column 
and  a  haK  of  fierce  print.  Yet  a  writer  is  no 
older  than  his  first  published  book,  and,  not- 
withstanding the  vain  appearances  of  decay 
which  attend  us  in  this  transitory  life,  I  stand 
here  with  the  wreath  of  only  fifteen  short  sum- 
mers on  my  brow. 

With  the  remark,  then,  that  at  such  tender 
age  some  naiveness  of  feeling  and  expression 
is  excusable,  I  proceed  to  admit  that,  upon 
the  whole,  my  previous  state  of  existence  was 
not  a  good  equipment  for  a  literary  life. 
Perhaps  I  should  not  have  used  the  word 
literary.  That  word  presupposes  an  intimacy 
of  acquaintance  with  letters,  a  turn  of  mind, 
and  a  manner  of  feeling  to  which  I  dare  lay 
no  claim.  I  only  love  letters;  but  the  love 
of  letters  does  not  make  a  literary  man,  any 
more  than  the  love  of  the  sea  makes  a  seaman. 
And  it  is  very  possible,  too,  that  I  love  the 
letters  in  the  same  way  a  literary  man  may 

182 


A    PERSONAL    RECORD 

love  the  sea  he  looks  at  from  the  shore — a  scene 
of  great  endeavour  and  of  great  achievements 
changing  the  face  of  the  world,  the  great  open 
way  to  all  sorts  of  undiscovered  countries. 
No,  perhaps  I  had  better  say  that  the  life  at 
sea — and  I  don't  mean  a  mere  taste  of  it, 
but  a  good  broad  span  of  years,  something 
that  really  counts  as  real  service — is  not, 
upon  the  whole,  a  good  equipment  for  a 
writing  life.  God  forbid,  though,  that  I 
should  be  thought  of  as  denying  my  masters 
of  the  quarter-deck.  I  am  not  capable  of  that 
sort  of  apostasy.  I  have  confessed  my  atti- 
tude of  piety  toward  their  shades  in  three  or 
four  tales,  and  if  any  man  on  earth  more  than 
another  needs  to  be  true  to  himself  as  he  hopes 
to  be  saved,  it  is  certainly  the  writer  of  fiction. 
What  I  meant  to  say,  simply,  is  that  the 
quarter-deck  training  does  not  prepare  one 
sufficiently  for  the  reception  of  literary  criti- 
cism. Only  that,  and  no  more.  But  this 
defect  is  not  without  gravity.  If  it  be  per- 
missible to  twist,  invert,  adapt  (and  spoil) 
Mr.  Anatole  France's  definition  of  a  good 
critic,  then  let  us  say  that  the  good  author 
is  he  who  contemplates  without  inarked  joy 
or^excessive  sorrow  the  adventures  of  his  soul 
'^'"" 183 


A    PERSONAL    RECORD 

among  criticisms.  Far  be  from  me  the  in- 
tention to  mislead  an  attentive  public  into  the 
belief  that  there  is  no  criticism  at  sea.  That 
would  be  dishonest,  and  even  impolite.  Every- 
thing can  be  found  at  sea,  according  to  the 
spirit  of  your  quest — strife,  peace,  romance, 
naturalism  of  the  most  pronounced  kind, 
ideals,  boredom,  disgust,  inspiration — and 
every  conceiyable  opportunity,  including  the 
opportunity  to  make  a  fool  of  yourself, 
exactly  as  in  the  pursuit  of  literature.  But 
the  quarter-deck  criticism  is  somewhat  differ- 
ent from  literary  criticism.  This  much  they 
have  in  common,  that  before  the  one  and 
the  other  the  answering  back,  as  a  general 
rule,  does  not  pay. 

Yes,  you  find  criticism  at  sea,  and  even 
appreciation — I  tell  you  everything  is  to  be 
found  on  salt  water — criticism  generally  im- 
promptu, and  always  viva  voce,  which  is  the 
outward,  obvious  difference  from  the  literary 
operation  of  that  kind,  with  consequent  fresh- 
ness and  vigour  which  may  be  lacking  in  the 
printed  word.  With  appreciation,  which 
comes  at  the  end,  when  the  critic  and  the 
criticised  are  about  to  part,  it  is  otherwise. 
The  sea  appreciation  of  one's  humble  talents 

184 


A    PERSONAL    RECORD 

has  the  permanency  of  the  written  word, 
seldom  the  charm  of  variety,  is  formal  in  its 
phrasing.  There  the  literary  master  has  the 
superiority,  though  he,  too,  can  in  effect  but 
say — and  often  says  it  in  the  very  phrase — 
"I  can  highly  recommend."  Only  usually  he 
uses  the  word  ''We,"  there  being  some  occult 
virtue  in  the  first  person  plural  which  makes 
it  specially  fit  for  critical  and  royal  declara- 
tions. I  have  a  small  handful  of  these  sea 
appreciations,  signed  by  various  masters, 
yellowing  slowly  in  my  writing-table's  left- 
hand  drawer,  rustling  under  my  reverent 
touch,  like  a  handful  of  dry  leaves  plucked 
for  a  tender  memento  from  the  tree  of  knowl- 
edge. Strange!  It  seems  that  it  is  for  these 
few  bits  of  paper,  headed  by  the  names  of  a 
few  ships  and  signed  by  the  names  of  a  few 
Scots  and  English  shipmasters,  that  I  have 
faced  the  astonished  indignations,  the  mock- 
eries, and  the  reproaches  of  a  sort  hard  to 
bear  for  a  boy  of  fifteen;  that  I  have  been 
charged  with  the  want  of  patriotism,  the  want 
of  sense,  and  the  want  of  heart,  too;  that  I 
went  through  agonies  of  self -conflict  and  shed 
secret  tears  not  a  few,  and  had  the  beauties 
of  the  Furca  Pass  spoiled  for  me,  and  have 

185 


A    PERSONAL    RECORD 

been  called  an  ''incorrigible  Don  Quixote," 
in  allusion  to  the  book-born  madness  of  the 
knight.  For  that  spoil!  They  rustle,  those 
bits  of  paper — some  dozen  of  them  in  all. 
In  that  faint,  ghostly  sound  there  live  the 
memories  of  twenty  years,  the  voices  of 
rough  men  now  no  more,  the  strong  voice  of 
the  everlasting  winds,  and  the  whisper  of  a 
mysterious  spell,  the  murmur  of  the  great  sea, 
which  must  have  somehow  reached  my  inland 
cradle  and  entered  my  unconscious  ear,  like 
that  formula  of  Mohammedan  faith  the 
Mussulman  father  whispers  into  the  ear  of 
his  new-born  infant,  making  him  one  of  the 
faithful  almost  with  his  first  breath.  I  do 
not  know  whether  I  have  been  a  good  seaman, 
but  I  know  I  have  been  a  very  faithful  one. 
And,  after  all,  there  is  that  handful  of  "char- 
acters" from  various  ships  to  prove  that  all 
these  years  have  not  been  altogether  a  dream. 
There  they  are,  brief,  and  monotonous  in 
tone,  but  as  suggestive  bits  of  writing  to  me 
as  any  inspired  page  to  be  found  in  literature. 
But  then,  you  see,  I  have  been  called  romantic. 
Well,  that  can't  be  helped.  But  stay.  I 
seem  to  remember  that  I  have  been  called  a 
realist,  also.     And  as  that  charge,  too,  can 

186 


A    PERSONAL    RECORD 

be  made  out,  let  us  try  to  live  up  to  it,  at 
whatever  cost,  for  a  change.  With  this  end  in 
view,  I  will  confide  to  you  coyly,  and  only  be- 
cause there  is  no  one  about  to  see  my  blushes 
by  the  light  of  the  midnight  lamp,  that  these 
suggestive  bits  of  quarter-deck  appreciation, 
one  and  all,  contain  the  words  "strictly 
sober." 

Did  I  overhear  a  civil  murmur,  "That's 
very  gratifying,  to  be  sure.^^"  Well,  yes,  it 
is  gratifying — thank  you.  It  is  at  least  as 
gratifying  to  be  certified  sober  as  to  be  certi- 
fied romantic,  though  such  certificates  would 
not  qualify  one  for  the  secretaryship  of  a  tem- 
perance association  or  for  the  post  of  oflicial 
troubadour  to  some  lordly  democratic  institu- 
tion such  as  the  London  County  Council,  for 
instance.  The  above  prosaic  reflection  is  put 
down  here  only  in  order  to  prove  the  general 
sobriety  of  my  judgment  in  mundane  affairs. 
I  make  a  point  of  it  because  a  couple  of  years 
ago,  a  certain  short  story  of  mine  being  pub- 
lished in  a  French  translation,  a  Parisian  critic 
— ^I  am  almost  certain  it  was  M.  Gustave  Kahn 
in  the  Gil-Bias — giving  me  a  short  notice, 
summed  up  his  rapid  impression  of  the 
wxiter's    quality   in   the   words   un   puissant 

187 


A    PERSONAL    RECORD 

reveur.  So  be  it!  Who  would  cavil  at  the 
words  of  a  friendly  reader?  Yet  perhaps 
not  such  an  unconditional  dreamer  as  all 
that.  I  will  make  bold  to  say  that  neither 
at  sea  nor  ashore  have  I  ever  lost  the  sense 
of  responsibility.  There  is  more  than  one 
sort  of  intoxication.  Even  before  the  most 
seductive  reveries  I  have  remained  mindful 
of  that  sobriety  of  interior  life,  that  asceticism 
of  sentiment,  in  which  alone  the  naked  form 
of  truth,  such  as  one  conceives  it,  such  as 
one  feels  it,  can  be  rendered  without  shame. 
It  is  but  a  maudlin  and  indecent  verity  that 
comes  out  through  the  strength  of  wine.  I 
have  tried  to  be  a  sober  worker  all  my  life — 
all  my  two  lives.  I  did  so  from  taste,  no 
doubt,  having  an  instinctive  horror  of  losing 
my  sense  of  full  self-possession,  but  ^so  from 
artistic  conviction.  Yet  there  are  so  many 
pitfalls  on  each  side  of  the  true  path  that, 
having  gone  some  way,  and  feeling  a  little 
battered  and  weary,  as  a  middle-aged  traveller 
will  from  the  mere  daily  difficulties  of  the 
march,  I  ask  myself  whether  I  have  kept 
always,  always  faithful  to  that  sobriety  where- 
in there  is  power  and  truth  and  peace. 

As  to  my  sea  sobriety,  that  is  quite  prop- 
188 


A    PERSONAL    RECORD 

erly  certified  under  the  sign-manual  of  sev- 
eral trustworthy  shipmasters  of  some  stand- 
ing in  their  time.  I  seem  to  hear  your  polite 
murmur  that  "Surely  this  might  have  been 
taken  for  granted."  Well,  no.  It  might  not 
have  been.  That  august  academical  body, 
the  Marine  Department  of  the  Board  of 
Trade,  takes  nothing  for  granted  in  the 
granting  of  its  learned  degrees.  By  its  regu- 
lations issued  under  the  first  Merchant  Ship- 
ping Act,  the  very  word  sober  must  be  writ- 
ten, or  a  whole  sackful,  a  ton,  a  mountain  of 
the  most  enthusiastic  appreciation  will  avail 
you  nothing.  The  door  of  the  examination- 
rooms  shall  remain  closed  to  your  tears  and 
entreaties.  The  most  fanatical  advocate  of 
temperance  could  not  be  more  pitilessly 
fierce  in  his  rectitude  than  the  Marine  De- 
partment of  the  Board  of  Trade.  As  I  have 
been  face  to  face  at  various  times  with  all 
the  examiners  of  the  Port  of  London  in  my 
generation,  there  can  be  no  doubt  as  to  the 
force  and  the  continuity  of  my  abstemious- 
ness. Three  of  them  were  examiners  in  sea- 
manship, and  it  was  my  fate  to  be  delivered 
into  the  hands  of  each  of  them  at  proper 
intervals  of  sea  service.     The  first  of  all,  tall, 

189 


A    PERSONAL    RECORD 

spare,  with  a  perfectly  white  head  and  mus- 
tache, a  quiet,  kindly  manner,  and  an  air  of 
benign  intelligence,  must,  I  am  forced  to 
conclude,  have  been  unfavourably  impressed 
by  something  in  my  appearance.  His  old, 
thin  hands  loosely  clasped  resting  on  his 
crossed  legs,  he  began  by  an  elementary  ques- 
tion, in  a  mild  voice,  and  went  on,  went  on. 
.  .  .  It  lasted  for  hours,  for  hours.  Had  I 
been  a  strange  microbe  with  potentialities 
of  deadly  mischief  to  the  Merchant  Service 
I  could  not  have  been  submitted  to  a  more 
microscopic  examination.  Greatly  reassured 
by  his  apparent  benevolence,  I  had  been  at 
first  very  alert  in  my  answers.  But  at 
length  the  feeling  of  my  brain  getting  addled 
crept  upon  me.  And  still  the  passionless 
process  went  on,  with  a  sense  of  untold  ages 
having  been  spent  already  on  mere  pre- 
liminaries. Then  I  got  frightened.  I  was 
not  frightened  of  being  plucked;  that  even- 
tuality did  not  even  present  itself  to  my  mind. 
It  was  something  much  more  serious  and 
weird.  "This  ancient  person,"  I  said  to 
myself,  terrified,  '*is  so  near  his  grave  that 
he  must  have  lost  all  notion  of  time.  He  is 
considering    this    examination    in    terms    of 

190 


A    PER.SONAL    RECORD 

eternity.  It  is  all  very  well  for  him.  His 
race  is  run.  But  I  may  find  myself  coming 
out  of  this  room  into  the  world  of  men  a 
stranger,  friendless,  forgotten  by  my  very 
landlady,  even  were  I  able  after  this  endless 
experience  to  remember  the  way  to  my  hired 
home."  This  statement  is  not  so  much  of  a 
verbal  exaggeration  as  may  be  supposed. 
Some  very  queer  thoughts  passed  through 
my  head  while  I  was  considering  my  answers; 
thoughts  which  had  nothing  to  do  with  sea- 
manship, nor  yet  with  anything  reasonable 
known  to  this  earth.  I  verily  believe  that 
at  times  I  was  light-headed  in  a  sort  of  lan- 
guid way.  At  last  there  fell  a  silence,  and 
that,  too,  seemed  to  last  for  ages,  while, 
bending  over  his  desk,  the  examiner  wrote 
out  my  pass-slip  slowly  with  a  noiseless  pen. 
He  extended  the  scrap  of  paper  to  me  with- 
out a  word,  inclined  his  white  head  gravely 
to  my  parting  bow.     .     .     . 

When  I  got  out  of  the  room  I  felt  limply 
flat,  like  a  squeezed  lemon,  and  the  door- 
keeper in  his  glass  cage,  where  I  stopped  to 
get  my  hat  and  tip  him  a  shilling,  said: 

"Well!  I  thought  you  were  never  coming 
out." 

191 


A    PERSONAL    RECORD 

*'How  long  have  I  been  in  there?"  I  asked> 
faintly. 

He  pulled  out  his  watch. 

"He  kept  you,  sir,  just  under  three  hours. 
I  don't  think  tliis  ever  happened  with  any 
of  the  gentlemen  before." 

It  was  only  when  I  got  out  of  the  building 
that  I  began  to  walk  on  air.  And  the  human 
animal  being  averse  from  change  and  timid 
before  the  unknown,  I  said  to  myseK  that 
I  really  would  not  mind  being  examined  by 
the  same  man  on  a  future  occasion.  But 
when  the  time  of  ordeal  came  round  again 
the  doorkeeper  let  me  into  another  room, 
with  the  now  familiar  paraphernalia  of  models 
of  ships  and  tackle,  a  board  for  signals  on 
the  wall,  a  big,  long  table  covered  with  official 
forms  and  having  an  unrigged  mast  fixed 
to  the  edge.  The  solitary  tenant  was  un- 
known to  me  by  sight,  though  not  by  repu- 
tation, which  was  simply  execrable.  Short 
and  sturdy,  as  far  as  I  could  judge,  clad  in 
an  old  brown  morning-suit,  he  sat  leaning 
on  his  elbow,  his  hand  shading  his  eyes,  and 
half  averted  from  the  chair  I  was  to  occupy 
on  the  other  side  of  the  table.  He  was  mo- 
tionless, myste.''ious,  remote,  enigmatical,  with 


A    PERSONAL    RECORD 

something  mournful,  too,  in  the  pose,  Hke 
that  statue  of  GiugKano  (I  think)  de  Medici 
shading  his  face  on  the  tomb  by  Michael 
Angelo,  though,  of  course,  he  was  far,  far 
from  being  beautiful.  He  began  by  trying  to 
make  me  talk  nonsense.  But  I  had  been 
warned  of  that  fiendish  trait,  and  contradicted 
him  with  great  assurance.  After  a  while  he 
left  off.  So  far  good.  But  his  immobility, 
the  thick  elbow  on  the  table,  the  abrupt, 
unhappy  voice,  the  shaded  and  averted  face 
grew  more  and  more  impressive.  He  kept 
inscrutably  silent  for  a  moment,  and  then, 
placing  me  in  a  ship  of  a  certain  size,  at  sea, 
under  certain  conditions  of  weather,  season, 
locality,  etc. — all  very  clear  and  precise — 
ordered  me  to  execute  a  certain  manoeuvre. 
Before  I  was  half  through  with  it  he  did  some 
material  damage  to  the  ship.  Directly  I  had 
grappled  with  the  difficulty  he  caused  another 
to  present  itself,  and  when  that,  too,  was  met  he 
stuck  another  ship  before  me,  creating  a  very 
dangerous  situation.  I  felt  slightly  outraged 
by  this  ingenuity  in  piling  trouble  upon  a  man. 
"I  wouldn't  have  got  into  that  mess,"  I 
suggested,  mildly.  "I  could  have  seen  that 
ship  before." 

193 


A    PERSONAL    RECORD 

He  never  stirred  the  least  bit. 

"No,  you  couldn't.     The  weather's  thick.'' 

"Oh!  I  didn't  know,"  I  apologized, 
blankly. 

I  suppose  that  after  all  I  managed  to  stave 
off  the  smash  with  sufficient  approach  to 
verisimilitude,  and  the  ghastly  business  went 
on.  You  must  understand  that  the  scheme 
of  the  test  he  was  applying  to  me  was,  I 
gathered,  a  homeward  passage — the  sort  of 
passage  I  would  not  wish  to  my  bitterest 
enemy.  That  imaginary  ship  seemed  to  la- 
bour under  a  most  comprehensive  curse.  It's 
no  use  enlarging  on  these  never-ending  mis- 
fortunes; suffice  it  to  say  that  long  before  the 
end  I  would  have  welcomed  with  gratitude 
an  opportunity  to  exchange  into  the  Flying 
Dutchman,  Finally  he  shoved  me  into  the 
North  Sea  (I  suppose)  and  provided  me  with  a 
lee  shore  with  outlying  sand-banks — the  Dutch 
coast,  presumably.  Distance,  eight  miles. 
The  evidence  of  such  implacable  animosity 
deprived  me  of  speech  for  quite  half  a  minute. 

"Well,"  he  said — ^for  our  pace  had  been 
very  smart,  indeed,  till  then. 

"I  will  have  to  think  a  little,  sir." 

"Doesn't  look  as  if  there  were  much  time 
194 


A    PERSONAL    RECORD 

to   think,"  he  muttered,   sardonically,   from 
under  his  hand. 

"No,  sir,"  I  said,  with  some  warmth. 
"Not  on  board  a  ship,  I  could  see.  But  so 
many  accidents  have  happened  that  I  really 
can't  remember  what  there's  left  for  me  to 
work  with." 

Still  half  averted,  and  with  his  eyes  con- 
cealed, he  made  unexpectedly  a  grunting  re- 
mark. 

"You've  done  very  well." 

"Have  I  the  two  anchors  at  the  bow,  sir.^^" 
I  asked. 

"Yes." 

I  prepared  myself  then,  as  a  last  hope  for 
the  ship,  to  let  them  both  go  in  the  most 
effectual  manner,  when  his  infernal  system  of 
testing  resourcefulness  came  into  play  again. 

"But  there's  only  one  cable.  You've  lost 
the  other." 

It  was  exasperating. 

"Then  I  would  back  them,  if  I  could,  and 
tail  the  heaviest  hawser  on  board  on  the  end 
of  the  chain  before  letting  go,  and  if  she  parted 
from  that,  which  is  quite  likely,  I  would  just 
do  nothing.     She  would  have  to  go." 

"  Nothing  more  to  do,  eh.^  " 
195 


A    PERSONAL    RECORD 

"No,  sir.     I  could  do  no  more." 

He  gave  a  bitter  haK-laugh. 

"You  could  always  say  your  prayers." 

He  got  up,  stretched  himself,  and  yawned 
slightly.  It  was  a  sallow,  strong,  unamiable 
face.  He  put  me,  in  a  surly,  bored  fashion, 
through  the  usual  questions  as  to  lights  and 
signals,  and  I  escaped  from  the  room  thank- 
fully— ^passed!  Forty  minutes!  And  again 
I  walked  on  air  along  Tower  Hill,  where  so 
many  good  men  had  lost  their  heads  because, 
I  suppose,  they  were  not  resourceful  enough 
to  save  them.  And  in  my  heart  of  hearts 
I  had  no  objection  to  meeting  that  examiner 
once  more  when  the  third  and  last  ordeal 
became  due  in  another  year  or  so.  I  even 
hoped  I  should.  I  knew  the  worst  of  him 
now,  and  forty  minutes  is  not  an  unreason- 
able time.     Yes,  I  distinctly  hoped.     .     .     . 

But  not  a  bit  of  it.  When  I  presented  my- 
self to  be  examined  for  master  the  examiner 
who  received  me  was  short,  plump,  with  a 
round,  soft  face  in  gray,  fluffy  whiskers,  and 
fresh,  loquacious  lips. 

He  commenced  operations  with  an  easy- 
going "Let's  see.  H'm.  Suppose  you  tell 
me  all  you  know  of  charter-parties."     He  kept 

196 


A    PERSONAL    RECORD 

it  up  in  that  style  all  through,  wandering 
off  in  the  shape  of  comment  into  bits  out  of 
his  own  life,  then  pulling  himself  up  short  and 
returning  to  the  business  in  hand.  It  was 
very  interesting.  "What's  your  idea  of  a 
jury-rudder  now?"  he  queried,  suddenly,  at 
the  end  of  an  instructive  anecdote  bearing 
upon  a  point  of  stowage. 

I  warned  him  that  I  had  no  experience  of 
a  lost  rudder  at  sea,  and  gave  him  two  classical 
examples  of  makeshifts  out  of  a  text-book. 
In  exchange  he  described  to  me  a  jury-rudder 
he  had  invented  himself  years  before,  when 
in  command  of  a  three-thousand-ton  steamer. 
It  was,  I  declare,  the  cleverest  contrivance 
imaginable.  "May  be  of  use  to  you  some 
day,"  he  concluded.  "You  will  go  into  steam 
presently.     Everybody  goes  into  steam." 

There  he  was  wrong.  I  never  went  into 
steam — not  really.  If  I  only  live  long  enough 
I  shall  become  a  bizarre  relic  of  a  dead  bar- 
barism, a  sort  of  monstrous  antiquity,  the 
only  seaman  of  the  dark  ages  who  had  never 
gone  into  steam — not  really. 

Before  the  examination  was  over  he  imparted 
to  me  a  few  interesting  details  of  the  transport 
service  in  the  time  of  the  Crimean  War. 

197 


A    PERSONAL    RECORD 

"The  use  of  wire  rigging  became  general 
about  that  time,  too,"  he  observed.  "I  was 
a  very  young  master  then.  That  was  before 
you  were  born." 

"Yes,  sir.     I  am  of  the  year  of  1857." 

"The  Mutiny  year,"  he  commented,  as  if 
to  himself,  adding  in  a  louder  tone  that  his 
ship  happened  then  to  be  in  the  Gulf  of 
Bengal,  employed  under  a  government  charter. 

Clearly  the  transport  service  had  been  the 
making  of  this  examiner,  who  so  unexpectedly 
had  given  me  an  insight  into  his  existence, 
awakening  in  me  the  sense  of  the  continuity 
of  that  sea  life  into  which  I  had  stepped  from 
outside;  giving  a  touch  of  human  intimacy  to 
the  machinery  of  official  relations.  I  felt 
adopted.  His  experience  was  for  me,  too,  as 
though  he  had  been  an  ancestor. 

Writing  my  long  name  (it  has  twelve  letters) 
with  laborious  care  on  the  slip  of  blue  paper, 
he  remarked : 

"You  are  of  PoKsh  extraction." 

"Born  there,  sir." 

He  laid  down  the  pen  and  leaned  back  to 
look  at  me  as  it  were  for  the  first  time. 

"Not  many  of  your  nationality  in  our  ser- 
vice, I  should  think.     I  never  remember  meet- 

198 


A    PERSONAL    RECORD 

ing  one  either  before  or  after  I  left  the  sea. 
Don't  remember  ever  hearing  of  one.  An  in- 
land people,  aren't  you.^" 

I  said  yes — very  much  so.  We  were  remote 
from  the  sea  not  only  by  situation,  but  also 
from  a  complete  absence  of  indirect  associa- 
tion, not  being  a  commercial  nation  at  all, 
but  purely  agricultural.  He  made  then  the 
quaint  reflection  that  it  was  "a  long  way  for 
me  to  come  out  to  begin  a  sea  life";  as  if 
sea  life  were  not  precisely  a  life  in  which  one 
goes  a  long  way  from  home. 

I  told  him,  smiling,  that  no  doubt  I  could 
have  found  a  ship  much  nearer  my  native 
place,  but  I  had  thought  to  myself  that  if  I 
was  to  be  a  seaman,  then  I  would  be  a  British 
seaman  and  no  other.  It  was  a  matter  of 
deliberate  choice. 

He  nodded  slightly  at  that;  and,  as  he  kept 
on  looking  at  me  interrogatively,  I  enlarged 
a  little,  confessing  that  I  had  spent  a  little 
time  on  the  way  in  the  Mediterranean  and  in 
the  West  Indies.  I  did  not  want  to  present 
myself  to  the  British  Merchant  Service  in  an 
altogether  green  state.  It  was  no  use  telling 
him  that  my  mysterious  vocation  was  so 
strong  that  my  very  wild  oats  had  to  be  sown 

199 


A    PERSONAL    RECORD 

at  sea.  It  was  the  exact  truth,  but  he  would 
not  have  understood  the  somewhat  excep- 
tional psychology  of  my  sea-going,  I  fear. 

"I  suppose  you've  never  come  across  one 
of  your  countrymen  at  sea.     Have  you,  now  ? ' ' 

I  admitted  I  never  had.  The  examiner 
had  given  himself  up  to  the  spirit  of  gossiping 
idleness.  For  myself,  I  was  in  no  haste  to 
leave  that  room.  Not  in  the  least.  The  era 
of  examinations  was  over.  I  would  never 
again  see  that  friendly  man  who  was  a  pro- 
fessional ancestor,  a  sort  of  grandfather  in  the 
craft.  Moreover,  I  had  to  wait  till  he  dis- 
missed me,  and  of  that  there  was  no  sign. 
As  he  remained  silent,  looking  at  me,  I 
added : 

"But  I  have  heard  of  one,  some  years  ago. 
He  seems  to  have  been  a  boy  serving  his 
time  on  board  a  Liverpool  ship,  if  I  am  not 
mistaken." 

"What  was  his  name.'^" 

I  told  him. 

"How  did  you  say  that.f^"  he  asked,  pucker- 
ing up  his  eyes  at  the  uncouth  sound. 

I  repeated  the  name  very  distinctly. 

"How  do  you  spell  it.?" 

I  told  him.  He  moved  his  head  at  the 
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A    PERSONAL    RECORD 

impracticable  nature  of  that  name,  and  ob- 
served : 

"It's  quite  as  long  as  your  own — isn't  it?" 
There  was  no  hurry.  I  had  passed  for 
master,  and  I  had  all  the  rest  of  my  life 
before  me  to  make  the  best  of  it.  That 
seemed  a  long  time.  I  went  leisurely  through 
a  small  mental  calculation,  and  said : 

"Not  quite.  Shorter  by  two  letters,  sir." 
"Is  it?"  The  examiner  pushed  the  signed 
blue  slip  across  the  table  to  me,  and  rose 
from  his  chair.  Somehow  this  seemed  a  very 
abrupt  ending  of  our  relations,  and  I  felt 
almost  sorry  to  part  from  that  excellent  man, 
who  was  master  of  a  ship  before  the  whisper 
of  the  sea  had  reached  my  cradle.  He  offered 
me  his  hand  and  wished  me  well.  He  even 
made  a  few  steps  toward  the  door  with  me, 
and  ended  with  good-natured  advice. 

"I  don't  know  what  may  be  your  plans, 
but  you  ought  to  go  into  steam.  When  a 
man  has  got  his  master's  certificate  it's  the 
proper  time.  If  I  were  you  I  would  go  into 
steam." 

I  thanked  him,  and  shut  the  door  behind 
me  definitely  on  the  era  of  examinations. 
But  that  time  I  did  not  walk  on  air,  as  on 

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A    PERSONAL    RECORD 

the  first  two  occasions.  I  walked  across  the 
hill  of  many  beheadings  with  measured  steps. 
It  was  a  fact,  I  said  to  m^^self ,  that  I  was  now 
a  British  master  mariner  beyond  a  doubt.  It 
was  not  that  I  had  an  exaggerated  sense  of 
that  very  modest  achievement,  with  which, 
however,  luck,  opportunity,  or  any  extrane- 
ous influence  could  have  had  nothing  to  do. 
That  fact,  satisfactory  and  obscure  in  itself, 
had  for  me  a  certain  ideal  significance.  It 
was  an  answer  to  certain  outspoken  scepti- 
cism and  even  to  some  not  very  kind  as- 
persions. I  had  vindicated  myself  from  what 
had  been  cried  upon  as  a  stupid  obstinacy  or 
a  fantastic  caprice.  I  don't  mean  to  say 
that  a  whole  country  had  been  convulsed  by 
my  desire  to  go  to  sea.  But  for  a  boy  be- 
tween fifteen  and  sixteen,  sensitive  enough, 
in  all  conscience,  the  commotion  of  his 
little  world  had  seemed  a  very  considerable 
thing  indeed.  So  considerable  that,  absurdly 
enough,  the  echoes  of  it  linger  to  this  day. 
I  catch  myseK  in  hours  of  solitude  and  retro- 
spect meeting  arguments  and  charges  made 
thirty-five  years  ago  by  voices  now  forever 
still;  finding  things  to  say  that  an  assailed 
boy  could  not  have  found,  simply  because  of 

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A    PERSONAL    RECORD 

the  mysterioiisness  of  his  impulses  to  himself. 
I  understood  no  more  than  the  people  who 
called  upon  me  to  explain  myself.  There  was 
no  precedent.  I  verily  believe  mine  was  the 
only  case  of  a  boy  of  my  nationality  and  ante- 
cedents taking  a,  so  to  speak,  standing  jump 
out  of  his  racial  surroundings  and  associations. 
For  you  must  understand  that  there  was  no  idea 
of  any  sort  of  "career"  in  my  call.  Of  Russia 
or  Germany  there  could  be  no  question.  The 
nationality,  the  antecedents,  made  it  impos- 
sible. The  feeling  against  the  Austrian  ser- 
vice was  not  so  strong,  and  I  dare  say  there 
would  have  been  no  difficulty  in  finding  my 
way  into  the  Naval  School  at  Pola.  It  would 
have  meant  six  months'  extra  grinding  at 
German,  perhaps;  but  I  was  not  past  the  age 
of  admission,  and  in  other  respects  I  was  well 
qualified.  This  expedient  to  palliate  my  folly 
was  thought  of — but  not  by  me.  I  must 
admit  that  in  that  respect  my  negative  was 
accepted  at  once.  That  order  of  feeling  was 
comprehensible  enough  to  the  most  inimical 
of  my  critics.  I  was  not  called  upon  to  offer 
explanations;  but  the  truth  is  that  what  I 
had  in  view  was  not  a  naval  career,  but  the 
sea.     There  seemed  no  way  open  to  it  but 

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A    PERSONAL    RECORD 

through  France.  I  had  the  language,  at  any 
rate,  and  of  all  the  countries  in  Europe  it  is 
with  France  that  Poland  has  most  connec- 
tion. There  were  some  facilities  for  having 
me  a  little  looked  after,  at  first.  Letters 
were  being  written,  answers  were  being  re- 
ceived, arrangements  were  being  made  for 
my  departure  for  Marseilles,  where  an  ex- 
cellent fellow  called  Solary,  got  at  in  a  round- 
about fashion  through  various  French  channels, 
had  promised  good-naturedly  to  put  le  jeune 
homme  in  the  way  of  getting  a  decent  ship 
for  his  first  start  if  he  really  wanted  a  taste 
of  ce  metier  de  chien. 

I  watched  all  these  preparations  grate- 
fully, and  kept  my  own  counsel.  But  what  I 
told  the  last  of  my  examiners  was  perfectly 
true.  Already  the  determined  resolve  that 
"if  a  seaman,  then  an  English  seaman"  was 
formulated  in  my  head,  though,  of  course, 
in  the  Polish  language.  I  did  not  know  six 
words  of  English,  and  I  was  astute  enough 
to  understand  that  it  was  much  better  to 
say  nothing  of  my  purpose.  As  it  was  I  was 
already  looked  upon  as  partly  insane,  at 
least  by  the  more  distant  acquaintances. 
The  principal  thing  was  to  get  away.     I  put 

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A    PERSONAL    RECORD 

my  trust  in  the  good-natured  Solary's  very 
civil  letter  to  my  uncle,  though  I  was  shocked 
a  little  by  the  phrase  about  the  metier  de  chien. 

This  Solary  (Baptistin),  when  I  beheld  him 
in  the  flesh,  turned  out  a  quite  young  man, 
very  good-looking,  with  a  fine  black,  short 
beard,  a  fresh  complexion,  and  soft,  merry 
black  eyes.  He  was  as  jovial  and  good- 
natured  as  any  boy  could  desire.  I  was  still 
asleep  in  my  room  in  a  modest  hotel  near  the 
quays  of  the  old  port,  after  the  fatigues  of 
the  journey  via  Vienna,  Zurich,  Lyons,  when 
he  burst  in,  flinging  the  shutters  open  to  the 
sun  of  Provenge  and  chiding  me  boisterously 
for  lying  abed.  How  pleasantly  he  startled 
me  by  his  noisy  objurgations  to  be  up  and  off 
instantly  for  a  *' three  years'  campaign  in  the 
South  Seas ! "  O  magic  words !  "  Une  campagne 
de  trois  arts  dans  les  mers  du  sud'' — that  is  the 
French  for  a  three  years'  deep-water  voyage. 

He  gave  me  a  delightful  waking,  and  his 
friendliness  was  unwearied;  but  I  fear  he 
did  not  enter  upon  the  quest  for  a  ship  for  me 
in  a  very  solemn  spirit.  He  had  been  at  sea 
himself,  but  had  left  off  at  the  age  of  twenty- 
five,  finding  he  could  earn  his  living  on  shore 
in  a  much  more  agreeable  manner.     He  was 

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A    PERSONAL    RECORD 

related  to  an  incredible  number  of  Marseilles 
well-to-do  families  of  a  certain  class.  One  of 
his  uncles  was  a  ship-broker  of  good  standing, 
with  a  large  connection  among  English  ships; 
other  relatives  of  his  dealt  in  ships'  stores, 
owned  sail-lofts,  sold  chains  and  anchors,  were 
master-stevedores,  calkers,  shipwrights.  His 
grandfather  (I  think)  was  a  dignitary  of  a 
kind,  the  Syndic  of  the  Pilots.  I  made  ac- 
quaintances among  these  people,  but  mainly 
among  the  pilots.  The  very  first  whole  day 
I  ever  spent  on  salt  water  was  by  invitation, 
in  a  big  half -decked  pilot-boat,  cruising  under 
close  reefs  on  the  lookout,  in  misty,  blowing 
weather,  for  the  sails  of  ships  and  the  smoke 
of  steamers  rising  out  there,  beyond  the  slim 
and  tall  Planier  lighthouse  cutting  the  line  of 
the  wind-swept  horizon  with  a  white  perpen- 
dicular stroke.  They  were  hospitable  souls, 
these  sturdy  Provengal  seamen.  Under  the 
general  designation  of  le  petit  ami  de  Baptistin 
I  was  made  the  guest  of  the  corporation  of 
pilots,  and  had  the  freedom  of  their  boats 
night  or  day.  And  many  a  day  and  a  night, 
too,  did  I  spend  cruising  with  these  rough, 
kindly  men,  under  whose  auspices  my  in- 
timacy with  the  sea  began.     Many  a  time 

206 


A    PERSONAL    RECORD 

"the  little  friend  of  Baptistin"  had  the  hooded 
cloak  of  the  Mediterranean  sailor  thrown  over 
him  by  their  honest  hands  while  dodging  at 
night  under  the  lee  of  Chateau  d'lf  on  the 
watch  for  the  lights  of  ships.  Their  sea- 
tanned  faces,  whiskered  or  shaved,  lean  or 
full,  with  the  intent,  wrinkled  sea  eyes  of  the 
pilot  breed,  and  here  and  there  a  thin  gold 
hoop  at  the  lobe  of  a  hairy  ear,  bent  over 
my  sea  infancy.  The  first  operation  of  sea- 
manship I  had  an  opportunity  of  observing 
was  the  boarding  of  ships  at  sea,  at  all  times, 
in  all  states  of  the  weather  They  gave  it  to 
me  to  the  full  And  I  have  been  invited  to 
sit  in  more  than  one  tall,  dark  house  of  the 
old  town  at  their  hospitable  board,  had  the 
bouillabaisse  ladled  out  into  a  thick  plate  by 
their  high-voiced,  broad-browed  wives,  talked 
to  their  daughters — thick-set  girls,  with  pure 
profiles,  glorious  masses  of  black  hair  arranged 
with  complicated  art,  dark  eyes,  and  dazzlingly 
white  teeth. 

I  had  also  other  acquaintances  of  quite  a 
different  sort.  One  of  them,  Madame  Del- 
estang,  an  imperious,  handsome  lady  in  a 
statuesque  style,  would  carry  me  off  now  and 
then  on  the  front  seat  of  her  carriage  to  the 

207 


A    PERSONAL    RECORD 

Pracio,  at  the  hour  of  fashionable  airing.  She 
belonged  to  one  of  the  old  aristocratic  families 
in  the  south.  In  her  haughty  weariness  she 
used  to  make  me  think  of  Lady  Dedlock  in 
Dickens's  "Bleak  House,"  a  work  of  the  mas- 
ter for  which  I  have  such  an  admiration,  or 
rather  such  an  intense  and  unreasoning  affec- 
tion, dating  from  the  days  of  my  childhood, 
that  its  very  weaknesses  are  more  precious 
to  me  than  the  strength  of  other  men's  work. 
I  have  read  it  innumerable  times,  both  in 
Polish  and  in  English;  I  have  read  it  only  the 
other  day,  and,  by  a  not  very  surprising  in- 
version, the  Lady  Dedlock  of  the  book  re- 
minded me  strongly  of  the  ''helle  Madame 
Delestang,'' 

Her  husband  (as  I  sat  facing  them  both), 
with  his  thin,  bony  nose  and  a  perfectly 
bloodless,  narrow  physiognomy  clamped  to- 
gether, as  it  were,  by  short,  formal  side  whisk- 
ers, had  nothing  of  Sir  Leicester  Dedlock's 
''grand  air"  and  courtly  solemnity.  He  be- 
longed to  the  haute  bourgeoisie  only,  and  was 
a  banker,  with  whom  a  modest  credit  had 
been  opened  for  my  needs.  He  was  such  an 
ardent — no,  such  a  frozen-up,  mummified 
Royalist  that  he  used  in  current  conversation 

208 


A    PERSONAL    RECORD 

turns  of  speech  contemporary,  I  should  say, 
with  the  good  Henri  Quatre;  and  when  talk- 
ing of  money  matters,  reckoned  not  in  francs, 
like  the  common,  godless  herd  of  post-Revo- 
lutionary Frenchmen,  but  in  obsolete  and 
forgotten  ecus — ecus  of  all  money  units  in 
the  world! — as  though  Louis  Quatorze  were 
still  promenading  in  royal  splendour  the  gar- 
dens of  Versailles,  and  Monsieur  de  Colbert 
busy  with  the  direction  of  maritime  affairs. 
You  must  admit  that  in  a  banker  of  the  nine- 
teenth century  it  was  a  quaint  idiosyncrasy. 
Luckily,  in  the  counting-house  (it  occupied 
part  of  the  ground  floor  of  the  Delestang 
town  residence,  in  a  silent,  shady  street)  the 
accounts  were  kept  in  modern  money,  so  that 
I  never  had  any  diflSculty  in  making  my 
wants  known  to  the  grave,  low- voiced,  dec- 
orous. Legitimist  (I  suppose)  clerks,  sitting 
in  the  perpetual  gloom  of  heavily  barred  win- 
dows behind  the  sombre,  ancient  counters, 
beneath  lofty  ceilings  with  heavily  molded 
cornices.  I  always  felt,  on  going  out,  as 
though  I  had  been  in  the  temple  of  some 
very  dignified  but  completely  temporal  re- 
ligion. And  it  was  generally  on  these  occa- 
sions that  under  the  great  carriage  gateway 

209 


A    PERSONAL    RECORD 

Lady  Ded — I  mean  Madame  Delestang — 
catching  sight  of  my  raised  hat,  would  beckon 
me  with  an  amiable  imperiousness  to  the  side 
of  the  carriage,  and  suggest  with  an  air  of 
amused  nonchalance,  '^Venez  done  faire  un 
tour  avec  nous/'  to  which  the  husband  would 
add  an  encouraging  ''C'est  ca,  Allons,  montez, 
jeune  homme."  He  questioned  me  some- 
times, significantly  but  with  perfect  tact  and 
delicacy,  as  to  the  way  I  employed  my  time, 
and  never  failed  to  express  the  hope  that  I 
wrote  regularly  to  my  ''honoured  uncle."  I 
made  no  secret  of  the  way  I  employed  my 
time,  and  I  rather  fancy  that  my  artless 
tales  of  the  pilots  and  so  on  entertained 
Madame  Delestang  so  far  as  that  ineffable 
woman  could  be  entertained  by  the  prattle 
of  a  youngster  very  full  of  his  new  experience 
among  strange  men  and  strange  sensations. 
She  expressed  no  opinions,  and  talked  to  me 
very  little;  yet  her  portrait  hangs  in  the  gal- 
lery of  my  intimate  memories,  fixed  there 
by  a  short  and  fleeting  episode.  One  day, 
after  putting  me  down  at  the  corner  of  a 
street,  she  offered  me  her  hand,  and  detained 
me,  by  a  slight  pressure,  for  a  moment.  While 
the    husband    sat    motionless    and    looking 

210 


A    PERSONAL    RECORD 

straight  before  him,  she  leaned  forward  in 
the  carriage  to  say,  with  just  a  shade  of  warn- 
ing in  her  leisurely  tone:  ''II  faut,  cependant, 
faire  attention  a  ne  pas  gdter  sa  vie  J'  I  had 
never  seen  her  face  so  close  to  mine  before. 
She  made  my  heart  beat  and  caused  me  to 
remain  thoughtful  for  a  whole  evening.  Cer- 
tainly one  must,  after  all,  take  care  not  to 
spoil  one's  life.  But  she  did  not  know — 
nobody  could  know — how  impossible  that 
danger  seemed  to  me. 


«ll 


VII 

CAN  the  transports  of  first  love  be 
calmed,  checked,  turned  to  a  cold  sus- 
picion of  the  future  by  a  grave  quota- 
tion from  a  work  on  political  economy?  I  ask 
— is  it  conceivable?  Is  it  possible?  Would 
it  be  right?  With  my  feet  on  the  very  shores 
of  the  sea  and  about  to  embrace  my  blue-eyed 
dream,  what  could  a  good-natured  warning 
as  to  spoiling  one's  life  mean  to  my  youthful 
passion?  It  was  the  most  unexpected  and  the 
last,  too,  of  the  many  warnings  I  had  received. 
It  sounded  to  me  very  bizarre — and,  uttered 
as  it  was  in  the  very  presence  of  my  enchant- 
ress, like  the  voice  of  folly,  the  voice  of 
ignorance.  But  I  was  not  so  callous  or  so 
stupid  as  not  to  recognize  there  also  the  voice 
of  kindness.  And  then  the  vagueness  of  the 
warning — ^because  what  can  be  the  meaning 
of  the  phrase:  to  spoil  one's  hfe.^ — arrested 
one's  attention  by  its  air  of  wise  profundity. 
At  any  rate,  as  I  have  said  before,  the  words  of 
la  belle  Madame  Delestang  made  me  thought- 
ful^ 


A    PERSONAL    RECORD 

ful  for  a  whole  evening.  I  tried  to  under- 
stand and  tried  in  vain,  not  having  any  notion 
of  Hfe  as  an  enterprise  that  could  be  mis- 
managed. But  I  left  off  being  thoughtful 
shortly  before  midnight,  at  which  hour, 
haunted  by  no  ghosts  of  the  past  and  by  no 
visions  of  the  future,  I  walked  down  the  quay 
of  the  Vieux  Port  to  join  the  pilot-boat  of  my 
friends.  I  knew  where  she  would  be  waiting 
for  her  crew,  in  the  little  bit  of  a  canal  behind 
the  fort  at  the  entrance  of  the  harbour.  The 
deserted  quays  looked  very  white  and  dry  in 
the  moonlight,  and  as  if  frost-bound  in  the 
sharp  air  of  that  December  night.  A  prowler 
or  two  slunk  by  noiselessly;  a  custom-house 
guard,  soldier-like,  a  sword  by  his  side,  paced 
close  under  the  bowsprits  of  the  long  row  of 
ships  moored  bows  on  opposite  the  long, 
slightly  curved,  continuous  flat  wall  of  the  tall 
houses  that  seemed  to  be  one  immense 
abandoned  building  with  innumerable  win- 
dows shuttered  closely.  Only  here  and  there 
a  small,  dingy  cafe  for  sailors  cast  a  yellow 
gleam  on  the  bluish  sheen  of  the  flagstones. 
Passing  by,  one  heard  a  deep  murmur  of 
voices  inside — ^nothing  more.  How  quiet 
everything  was  at  the  end  of  the  quays  on  the 

213 


A    PERSONAL    RECORD 

last  night  on  which  I  went  out  for  a  service 
cruise  as  a  guest  of  the  Marseilles  pilots! 
Not  a  footstep,  except  my  own,  not  a  sigh, 
not  a  whispering  echo  of  the  usual  revelry 
going  on  in  the  narrow,  unspeakable  lanes  of 
the  Old  Town  reached  my  ear — and  suddenly, 
with  a  terrific  jingling  rattle  of  iron  and  glass, 
the  omnibus  of  the  Jolliette  on  its  last  journey 
swung  round  the  corner  of  the  dead  wall 
which  faces  across  the  paved  road  the  charac- 
teristic angular  mass  of  the  Fort  St.  Jean. 
Three  horses  trotted  abreast,  with  the  clatter 
of  hoofs  on  the  granite  setts,  and  the  yellow, 
uproarious  machine  jolted  violently  behind 
them,  fantastic,  lighted  up,  perfectly  empty, 
and  with  the  driver  apparently  asleep  on  his 
swaying  perch  above  that  amazing  racket. 
I  flattened  myself  against  the  wall  and  gasped. 
It  was  a  stunning  experience.  Then  after 
staggering  on  a  few  paces  in  the  shadow  of  the 
fort,  casting  a  darkness  more  intense  than 
that  of  a  clouded  night  upon  the  canal,  I  saw 
the  tiny  light  of  a  lantern  standing  on  the 
quay,  and  became  aware  of  muffled  figures 
making  toward  it  from  various  directions. 
Pilots  of  the  Third  Company  hastening  to 
embark.     Too  sleepy  to  be  talkative,  they 

214 


A    PERSONAL    RECORD 

step  on  board  in  silence.  But  a  few  low 
grunts  and  an  enormous  yawn  are  heard. 
Somebody  even  ejaculates:  ''Ah  I  Coquin  de 
sort  /"  and  sighs  wearily  at  his  hard  fate. 

The  patron  of  the  Third  Company  (there 
were  five  companies  of  pilots  at  that  time,  I 
believe)  is  the  brother-in-law  of  my  friend 
Solary  (Baptistin),  a  broad-shouldered,  deep- 
chested  man  of  forty,  with  a  keen,  frank 
glance  which  always  seeks  your  eyes.  He 
greets  me  by  a  low,  hearty  "ff<?,  rami.  Com- 
ment vaf  With  his  clipped  mustache  and 
massive  open  face,  energetic  and  at  the  same 
time  placid  in  expression,  he  is  a  fine  specimen 
of  the  southerner  of  the  calm  type.  For 
there  is  such  a  type  in  which  the  volatile 
southern  passion  is  transmuted  into  solid 
force.  He  is  fair,  but  no  one  could  mistake 
him  for  a  man  of  the  north  even  by  the  dim 
gleam  of  the  lantern  standing  on  the  quay. 
He  is  worth  a  dozen  of  your  ordinary  Nor- 
mans or  Bretons,  but  then,  in  the  whole 
immense  sweep  of  the  Mediterranean  shores, 
you  could  not  find  half  a  dozen  men  of  his 
stamp. 

Standing  by  the  tiller,  he  pulls  out  his 
watch  from  under  a  thick  jacket  and  bends 

215 


A    PERSONAL    RECORD 

his  head  over  it  in  the  hght  cast  into  the  boat. 
Time's  up.  His  pleasant  voice  commands, 
in  a  quiet  undertone,  "  LargiiezJ'  A  suddenly 
projected  arm  snatches  the  lantern  oflF  the 
quay — and,  warped  along  by  a  line  at  first? 
then  with  the  regular  tug  of  four  heavy  sweeps 
in  the  bow,  the  big  half -decked  boat  full  of 
men  glides  out  of  the  black,  breathless  shadow 
of  the  fort.  The  open  water  of  the  avant-port 
glitters  under  the  moon  as  if  sown  over  with 
millions  of  sequins,  and  the  long  white  break- 
water shines  hke  a  thick  bar  of  solid  silver. 
With  a  quick  rattle  of  blocks  and  one  single 
silky  swish,  the  sail  is  filled  by  a  little  breeze 
keen  enough  to  have  come  straight  down  from 
the  frozen  moon,  and  the  boat,  after  the  clatter 
of  the  hauled-in  sweeps,  seems  to  stand  at 
rest,  surrounded  by  a  mysterious  whispering 
so  faint  and  unearthly  that  it  may  be  the 
rustling  of  the  brilliant,  overpowering  moon- 
rays  breaking  like  a  rain-shower  upon  the 
hard,  smooth,  shadowless  sea. 

I  may  well  remember  that  last  night  spent 
with  the  pilots  of  the  Third  Company.  I 
have  known  the  spell  of  moonlight  since, 
on  various  seas  and  coasts — coasts  of  forests, 
of  rocks,   of  sand  dunes — ^but  no  magic  so 

216 


A    PERSONAL    RECORD 

perfect  in  its  revelation  of  unsuspected  char- 
acter, as  though  one  were  allowed  to  look 
upon  the  mystic  nature  of  material  things. 
For  hours  I  suppose  no  word  was  spoken  in 
that  boat.  The  pilots,  seated  in  two  rows 
facing  each  other,  dozed,  with  their  arms 
folded  and  their  chins  resting  upon  their 
breasts.  They  displayed  a  great  variety  of 
caps:  cloth,  wool,  leather,  peaks,  ear-flaps, 
tassels,  with  a  picturesque  round  heret  or 
two  pulled  down  over  the  brows;  and  one 
grandfather,  with  a  shaved,  bony  face  and  a 
great  beak  of  a  nose,  had  a  cloak  with  a  hood 
which  made  him  look  in  our  midst  like  a 
cowled  monk  being  carried  off  goodness  knows 
where  by  that  silent  company  of  seamen — 
quiet  enough  to  be  dead. 

My  fingers  itched  for  the  tiller,  and  in  due 
course  my  friend,  the  patron,  surrendered  it 
to  me  in  the  same  spirit  in  which  the  family 
coachman  lets  a  boy  hold  the  reins  on  an 
easy  bit  of  road.  There  was  a  great  solitude 
around  us;  the  islets  ahead,  Monte  Cristo 
and  the  Chateau  dTf  in  full  Hght,  seemed 
to  float  toward  us — so  steady,  so  impercep- 
tible was  the  progress  of  our  boat.  "Keep 
her  in  the  furrow  of  the  moon,"  the  patron 

217 


A    PERSONAL    RECORD 

directed  me,  in  a  quiet  murmur,  sitting  down 
ponderously  in  the  stern-sheets  and  reaching 
for  his  pipe. 

The  pilot  station  in  weather  hke  this  was 
only  a  mile  or  two  to  the  westward  of  the 
islets;  and  presently,  as  we  approached  the 
spot,  the  boat  we  were  going  to  relieve  swam 
into  our  view  suddenly,  on  her  way  home> 
cutting  black  and  sinister  into  the  wake  of 
the  moon  under  a  sable  wing,  wtile  to  them 
our  sail  must  have  been  a  vision  of  white 
and  dazzling  radiance.  Without  altering  the 
course  a  hair's  breadth  we  slipped  by  each 
other  within  an  oar's  length.  A  drawling, 
sardonic  hail  came  out  of  her.  Instantly,  as 
if  by  magic,  our  dozing  pilots  got  on  their 
feet  in  a  body.  An  incredible  babel  of  ban- 
tering shouts  burst  out,  a  jocular,  passionate, 
voluble  chatter,  which  lasted  till  the  boats 
were  stern  to  stern,  theirs  all  bright  now,  and, 
with  a  shining  sail  to  our  eyes,  we  turned  all 
black  to  their  vision,  and  drew  away  from 
them  under  a  sable  wing.  That  extraordi- 
nary uproar  died  away  almost  as  suddenly  as 
it  had  begun;  first  one  had  enough  of  it  and 
sat  down,  then  another,  then  three  or  four 
together;  and  when  all  had  left  oflF  with  mut- 

S18 


A    PERSONAL    RECORD 

ters  and  growling  half-laughs  the  sound  of 
hearty  chuckling  became  audible,  persistent? 
unnoticed.  The  cowled  grandfather  was  very 
much  entertained  somewhere  within  his  hood. 
He  had  not  joined  in  the  shouting  of  jokes, 
neither  had  he  moved  the  least  bit.  He  had 
remained  quietly  in  his  place  against  the  foot 
of  the  mast.  I  had  been  given  to  under- 
stand long  before  that  he  had  the  rating  of 
a  second-class  able  seaman  (matelot  leger)  in 
the  fleet  which  sailed  from  Toulon  for  the 
conquest  of  Algeria  in  the  year  of  grace  1830. 
And,  indeed,  I  had  seen  and  examined  one 
of  the  buttons  of  his  old  brown,  patched  coat, 
the  only  brass  button  of  the  miscellaneous  lot, 
flat  and  thin,  with  the  words  Equipages  de 
ligne  engraved  on  it.  That  sort  of  button, 
I  believe,  went  out  with  the  last  of  the  French 
Bourbons.  "I  preserved  it  from  the  time  of 
my  navy  service,"  he  explained,  nodding 
rapidly  his  frail,  vulture-like  head.  It  was 
not  very  likely  that  he  had  picked  up  that  relic 
in  the  street.  He  looked  certainly  old  enough 
to  have  fought  at  Trafalgar — or,  at  any  rate, 
to  have  played  his  little  part  there  as  a  powder- 
monkey.  Shortly  after  we  had  been  intro- 
duced  he   had    informed    me    in   a   Franco- 

219 


A    PERSONAL    RECORD 

Provengal  jargon,  mumbling  tremulously  with 
his  toothless  jaws,  that  when  he  was  a  "shaver 
no  higher  than  that"  he  had  seen  the  Emperor 
Napoleon  returning  from  Elba.  It  was  at 
night,  he  narrated  vaguely,  without  anima- 
tion, at  a  spot  between  Frejus  and  Antibes, 
in  the  open  country.  A  big  fire  had  been  lit 
at  the  side  of  the  cross-roads.  The  population 
from  several  villages  had  collected  there,  old 
and  young — down  to  the  very  children  in 
arms,  because  the  women  had  refused  to  stay 
at  home.  Tall  soldiers  wearing  high,  hairy 
caps  stood  in  a  circle,  facing  the  people  si- 
lently, and  their  stern  eyes  and  big  mustaches 
were  enough  to  make  everybody  keep  at  a 
distance.  He,  ''being  an  impudent  little 
shaver,"  wriggled  out  of  the  crowd,  creeping 
on  his  hands  and  knees  as  near  as  he  dared  to 
the  grenadiers'  legs,  and  peeping  through  dis- 
covered, standing  perfectly  still  in  the  light 
of  the  fire,  "a  little  fat  fellow  in  a  three- 
cornered  hat,  buttoned  up  in  a  long  straight 
coat,  with  a  big,  pale  face  inclined  on  one 
shoulder,  looking  something  like  a  priest. 
His  hands  were  clasped  behind  his  back. 
.  .  .  It  appears  that  this  was  the  Em- 
peror," the  ancient  commented,  with  a  faint 

220 


A    PERSONAL    RECORD 

sigh.  He  was  staring  from  the  ground  with  all 
his  might,  when  "my  poor  father,"  who  had 
been  searching  for  his  boy  frantically  every- 
where, pounced  upon  him  and  hauled  him 
away  by  the  ear. 

The  tale  seems  an  authentic  recollection. 
He  related  it  to  me  many  times,  using  the 
very  same  words.  The  grandfather  honoured 
me  by  a  special  and  somewhat  embarrassing 
predilection.  Extremes  touch.  He  was  the 
oldest  member  by  a  long  way  in  that  com- 
pany, and  I  was,  if  I  may  say  so,  its  tem- 
porarily adopted  baby.  He  had  been  a  pilot 
longer  than  any  man  in  the  boat  could  re- 
member; thirty — forty  years.  He  did  not 
seem  certain  himself,  but  it  could  be  found 
out,  he  suggested,  in  the  archives  of  the 
Pilot-office.  He  had  been  pensioned  off  years 
before,  but  he  went  out  from  force  of  habit; 
and,  as  my  friend  the  patron  of  the  company 
once  confided  to  me  in  a  whisper,  "the  old 
chap  did  no  harm.  He  was  not  in  the  way." 
They  treated  him  with  rough  deference. 
One  and  another  would  address  some  insig- 
nificant remark  to  him  now  and  again,  but 
nobody  really  took  any  notice  of  what  he 
had  to  say.     He  had  survived  his  strength, 

^21 


A    PERSONAL    RECORD 

his  usefulness,  his  very  wisdom.  He  wore 
long,  green,  worsted  stockings  pulled  up 
above  the  knee  over  his  trousers,  a  sort  of 
woollen  nightcap  on  his  hairless  cranium, 
and  wooden  clogs  on  his  feet.  Without  his 
hooded  cloak  he  looked  like  a  peasant.  Half 
a  dozen  hands  would  be  extended  to  help 
him  on  board,  but  afterward  he  was  left 
pretty  much  to  his  own  thoughts.  Of  course 
he  never  did  any  work,  except,  perhaps,  to 
cast  off  some  rope  when  hailed,  ''He,  VAn- 
cien  I  let  go  the  halyards  there,  at  your  hand" 
— or  some  such  request  of  an  easy  kind. 

No  one  took  notice  in  any  way  of  the 
chuckling  within  the  shadow  of  the  hood. 
He  kept  it  up  for  a  long  time  with  intense 
enjoyment.  Obviously  he  had  preserved  in- 
tact the  innocence  of  mind  which  is  easily 
amused.  But  when  his  hilarity  had  ex- 
hausted itself,  he  made  a  professional  remark 
in  a  self-assertive  but  quavering  voice : 

"Can't  expect  much  work  on  a  night  like 
this." 

No  one  took  it  up.  It  was  a  mere  truism. 
Nothing  under  canvas  could  be  expected  to 
make  a  port  on  such  an  idle  night  of  dreamy 
splendour  and  spiritual  stillness.     We  would 


A    PERSONAL    RECORD 

have  to  glide  idly  to  and  fro,  keeping  our 
station  within  the  appointed  bearings,  and, 
unless  a  fresh  breeze  sprang  up  with  the 
dawn,  we  would  land  before  sunrise  on  a 
small  islet  that,  within  two  miles  of  us,  shone 
Uke  a  lump  of  frozen  moonlight,  to  "break  a 
crust  and  take  a  pull  at  the  wine  bottle."  I 
was  familiar  with  the  procedure.  The  stout 
boat  emptied  of  her  crowd  would  nestle  her 
buoyant,  capable  side  against  the  very  rock 
— such  is  the  perfectly  smooth  amenity  of 
the  classic  sea  when  in  a  gentle  mood.  The 
crust  broken  and  the  mouthful  of  wine 
swallowed — it  was  literally  no  more  than  that 
with  this  abstemious  race — the  pilots  would 
pass  the  time  stamping  their  feet  on  the  slabs 
of  sea-salted  stone  and  blowing  into  their 
nipped  fingers.  One  or  two  misanthropists 
would  sit  apart,  perched  on  boulders  like 
manlike  sea-fowl  of  solitary  habits;  the  so- 
ciably disposed  would  gossip  scandalously 
in  little  gesticulating  knots;  and  there  would 
be  perpetually  one  or  another  of  my  hosts 
taking  aim  at  the  empty  horizon  with  the 
long,  brass  tube  of  the  telescope,  a  heavy, 
murderous-looking  piece  of  collective  prop- 
erty, everlastingly  changing  hands  with  bran- 

223 


A    PERSONAL    RECORD 

dishing  and  levelling  movements.  Then  about 
noon  (it  was  a  short  turn  of  duty — the  long 
turn  lasted  twenty -four  hours)  another  boat- 
ful of  pilots  would  relieve  us — and  we  should 
steer  for  the  old  Phoenician  port,  dominated, 
watched  over  from  the  ridge  of  a  dust-gray, 
arid  hill  by  the  red-and-white  striped  pile 
of  the  Notre  Dame  de  la  Garde. 

All  this  came  to  pass  as  I  had  foreseen 
in  the  fullness  of  my  very  recent  experience. 
But  also  something  not  foreseen  by  me  did 
happen,  something  which  causes  me  to  re- 
member my  last  outing  with  the  pilots.  It 
was  on  this  occasion  that  my  hand  touched, 
for  the  first  time,  the  side  of  an  English 
ship. 

No  fresh  breeze  had  come  with  the  dawn, 
only  the  steady  little  draught  got  a  more 
keen  edge  on  it  as  the  eastern  sky  became 
bright  and  glassy  with  a  clean,  colourless  light. 
It  was  while  we  were  all  ashore  on  the  islet 
that  a  steamer  was  picked  up  by  the  telescope, 
a  black  speck  like  an  insect  posed  on  the  hard 
edge  of  the  offing.  She  emerged  rapidly  to 
her  water-line  and  came  on  steadily,  a  slim 
hull  with  a  long  streak  of  smoke  slanting  away 
from    the    rising    sun.     We    embarked    in    a 


A    PERSONAL    RECORD 

hurry,  and  headed  the  boat  out  for  our  prey, 
but  we  hardly  moved  three  miles  an  hour. 

She  was  a  big,  high-class  cargo-steamer  of 
a  type  that  is  to  be  met  on  the  sea  no  more — 
black  hull,  with  low,  white  superstructures, 
powerfully  rigged  with  three  masts  and  a  lot 
of  yards  on  the  fore;  two  hands  at  her  enor- 
mous wheel — steam  steering-gear  was  not  a 
matter  of  course  in  these  days — and  with 
them  on  the  bridge  three  others,  bulky  in 
thick  blue  jackets,  ruddy-faced,  muffled  up, 
with  peak  caps — I  suppose  all  her  officers. 
There  are  ships  I  have  met  more  than  once 
and  known  well  by  sight  whose  names  I 
have  forgotten;  but  the  name  of  that  ship 
seen  once  so  many  years  ago  in  the  clear 
flush  of  a  cold,  pale  sunrise  I  have  not  for- 
gotten. How  could  I — the  first  Enghsh  ship 
on  whose  side  I  ever  laid  my  hand!  The 
name — I  read  it  letter  by  letter  on  the  bow — 
was  James  WestolL  Not  very  romantic,  you 
will  say.  The  name  of  a  very  considerable, 
well-known,  and  universally  respected  North- 
country  ship-owner,  I  believe.  James  West- 
oil!  What  better  name  could  an  honourable, 
hard-working  ship  have.^^  To  me  the  very 
grouping  of  the  letters  is  alive  with  the  ro- 

^25 


A    PERSONAL    RECORD 

mantic  feeling  of  her  reality  as  I  saw  her  float- 
ing motionless  and  borrowing  an  ideal  grace 
from  the  austere  purity  of  the  light. 

We  were  then  very  near  her  and,  on  a 
sudden  impulse,  I  volunteered  to  pull  bow 
in  the  dinghy  which  shoved  off  at  once  to 
put  the  pilot  on  board  while  our  boat,  fanned 
by  the  faint  air  which  had  attended  us  all 
through  the  night,  went  on  gliding  gently 
past  the  black,  glistening  length  of  the  ship. 
A  few  strokes  brought  us  alongside,  and  it  was 
then  that,  for  the  very  first  time  in  my  life, 
I  heard  myself  addressed  in  English — the 
speech  of  my  secret  choice,  of  my  future,  of 
long  friendships,  of  the  deepest  affections, 
of  hours  of  toil  and  hours  of  ease,  and  of 
solitary  hours,  too,  of  books  read,  of  thoughts 
pursued,  of  remembered  emotions — of  my 
very  dreams!  And  if  (after  being  thus  fash- 
ioned by  it  in  that  part  of  me  which  cannot 
decay)  I  dare  not  claim  it  aloud  as  my  own, 
then,  at  any  rate,  the  speech  of  my  children. 
Thus  small  events  grow  memorable  by  the 
passage  of  time.  As  to  the  quality  of  the 
address  itself  I  cannot  say  it  was  very  striking. 
Too  short  for  eloquence  and  devoid  of  all 
charm  of  tone,  it  consisted  precisely  of  the 

9.m 


A    PERSONAL    RECORD 

three  words  "Look  out  there!"  growled  out 
huskily  above  my  head. 

It  proceeded  from  a  big  fat  fellow  (he  had 
an  obtrusive,  hairy  double  chin)  in  a  blue 
woollen  shirt  and  roomy  breeches  pulled  up 
very  high,  even  to  the  level  of  his  breastbone, 
by  a  pair  of  braces  quite  exposed  to  public 
view.  As  where  he  stood  there  was  no  bul- 
wark, but  only  a  rail  and  stanchions,  I  was 
able  to  take  in  at  a  glance  the  whole  of  his 
voluminous  person  from  his  feet  to  the  high 
crown  of  his  soft  black  hat,  which  sat  like  an 
absurd  flanged  cone  on  his  big  head.  The 
grotesque  and  massive  aspect  of  that  deck- 
hand (I  suppose  he  was  that — very  likely  the 
lamp-trimmer)  surprised  me  very  much.  My 
course  of  reading,  of  dreaming,  and  longing  for 
the  sea  had  not  prepared  me  for  a  sea  brother 
of  that  sort.  I  never  met  again  a  figure  in 
the  least  like  his  except  in  the  illustrations  to 
Mr.  W.  W.  Jacobs's  most  entertaining  tales 
of  barges  and  coasters;  but  the  inspired  talent 
of  Mr.  Jacobs  for  poking  endless  fun  at  poor, 
innocent  sailors  in  a  prose  which,  however 
extravagant  in  its  felicitous  invention,  is 
always  artistically  adjusted  to  observed  truth, 
was  not  yet.     Perhaps  Mr.   Jacobs  himself 

227 


A    PERSONAL    RECORD 

was  not  yet.  I  fancy  that,  at  most,  if  he  had 
made  his  nurse  laugh  it  was  about  all  he  had 
achieved  at  that  early  date. 

Therefore,  I  repeat,  other  disabilities  apart, 
I  could  not  have  been  prepared  for  the  sight 
of  that  husky  old  porpoise.  The  object  of 
his  concise  address  was  to  call  my  attention 
to  a  rope  which  he  incontinently  flung  down 
for  me  to  catch.  I  caught  it,  though  it  was 
not  really  necessary,  the  ship  having  no  way 
on  her  by  that  time.  Then  everything  went 
on  very  swiftly.  The  dinghy  came  with  a 
slight  bump  against  the  steamer's  side;  the 
pilot,  grabbing  the  rope  ladder,  had  scrambled 
half-way  up  before  I  knew  that  our  task  of 
boarding  was  done;  the  harsh,  muffled  clang- 
ing of  the  engine-room  telegraph  struck  my 
ear  through  the  iron  plate;  my  companion  in 
the  dinghy  was  urging  me  to  "  shove  off  — ^push 
hard";  and  when  I  bore  against  the  smooth 
flank  of  the  first  English  ship  I  ever  touched 
in  my  life,  I  felt  it  already  throbbing  under 
my  open  palm. 

Her  head  swung  a  little  to  the  west,  point- 
ing toward  the  miniature  lighthouse  of  the 
JoUiette  breakwater,  far  away  there,  hardly 
distinguishable  against  the  land.     The  dinghy 


A    PERSONAL    RECORD 

danced  a  squashy,  splashy  jig  in  the  wash  of 
the  wake;  and,  turning  in  my  seat,  I  followed 
the  James  Westoll  with  my  eyes.  Before  she 
had  gone  in  a  quarter  of  a  mile  she  hoisted 
her  flag,  as  the  harbour  regulations  prescribe 
for  arriving  and  departing  ships.  I  saw  it 
suddenly  flicker  and  stream  out  on  the  flag- 
staff. The  Red  Ensign!  In  the  pellucid, 
colourless  atmosphere  bathing  the  drab  and 
gray  masses  of  that  southern  land,  the  livid 
islets,  the  sea  of  pale,  glassy  blue  under  the 
pale,  glassy  sky  of  that  cold  sunrise,  it  was,  as 
far  as  the  eye  could  reach,  the  only  spot  of 
ardent  colour — flame-like,  intense,  and  pres- 
ently as  minute  as  the  tiny  red  spark  the  con- 
centrated reflection  of  a  great  fire  kindles  in 
the  clear  heart  of  a  globe  of  crystal.  The  Red 
Ensign — the  symbolic,  protecting,  warm  bit  of 
bunting  flung  wide  upon  the  seas,  and  des- 
tined for  so  many  years  to  be  the  only  roof 
over  my  head. 


THE   END 


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DUE  AS  STAMPED  BELOW 


MAY  u  ml 


MftY  11 


1^0  061987 


1987 


Ull    1 


DEC  i  8  t^et 


JUL31WW 


IIT'P    DEI;    -1  mi 


IIIAY241985 


fSCCIRC  APR 


SEC  CIRC  APR  2  7  19f5 


RB 


ma'^ 


BY 


JUN  i  V  1985 


QRCUlAnON  DffT,  UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA,  BERKELF 

FORM  NO.  DD6,  60m,  1  1  /78  BERKELEY,  CA  94720 


i^iJ  aiA-50»i-12,'60 
(B6221sl0)476B 


.General  Library 

Umvetsity  of  California 

Berkeley 


GENERAL  L.BBABV.U.C.BEBKELEV 


